A Course in Miracles - Miracles in Action Press

Transcription

A Course in Miracles
—
Original Edition
text
workbook for students
manual for teachers
Helen Schucman and William T.Thetford, Editors
Course in Miracles Society
Y
our past learning must have
taught you the wrong things
simply because it has not made you
happy. On this basis alone, its value
should be questioned.
If learning aims at change, and
that is always its purpose, are you
satisfied with the changes your learning has brought you? Dissatisfaction
with learning outcomes must be a
sign of learning failure since it means
that you did not get what you want.
The curriculum of the Atonement is
the opposite of the curriculum you
have established for yourselves, but
so is its outcome. If the outcome of
yours has made you unhappy and if
A
Course
In
Miracles
Text
you want a different one, a change
in the curriculum is obviously necessary.
T8:4-5
Course
in
Miracles Society
Contents
Published by Course in Miracles Society
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——
F o r e w o r d .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x i i i
Introduction. ................................................. 1
one
two
three
——
Original Edition
ISBN 0-9764200-6-6
The Illusion
of
Separation
Retraining
the
Mind
i. Introduction...................................................................................39
ii. Special Principles For Miracle Workers............................................40
iii. Atonement Without Sacrifice.........................................................40
iv. Miracles as Accurate Perception......................................................43
v. Perception Versus Knowledge...........................................................44
vi. Conflict and the Ego......................................................................46
vii. The Loss of Certainty....................................................................49
viii. Judgment and the Authority Problem...........................................51
ix. Creating Versus the Self-Image.......................................................53
four
The Root
of
All Evil
i. Introduction...................................................................................56
ii. Right Teaching and Right Learning................................................57
iii. The Ego and False Autonomy .......................................................60
iv. Love without Conflict....................................................................64
v. The Escape from Fear......................................................................67
vi. The Ego-Body Illusion .................................................................70
vii. The Constant State ......................................................................72
viii. Creation and Communication ....................................................75
ix. True Rehabilitation ......................................................................77
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[A Course in Miracles is a public domain document,
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Miracles
i. Introduction...................................................................................18
ii. The Reinterpretation of Defenses..................................................20
iii. Healing as Release from Fear........................................................26
iv. Fear as Lack of Love......................................................................31
v. The Correction for Lack of Love....................................................32
vi. The Meaning of the Last Judgment...............................................37
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to
i. Principles of Miracles....................................................................... 3
ii. Distortions of Miracle Impulses......................................................16
Course in Miracles Society (CIMS) is an international group of Course
students and teachers organized to discover, authenticate and propagate the divine
teachings of A Course in Miracles. As students, we seek to increase our knowledge
of Jesus’ words and to deepen our experience of his teaching. As teachers, we work
to circulate the message of A Course throughout the world by our words, by our
deeds, and by the example of our lives.
Introduction
five
Healing
and
Wholeness
i. Introduction.................................................................................. 79
ii. Healing As Joining ........................................................................ 80
iii. The Mind of the Atonement ........................................................ 81
iv. The Voice For God ....................................................................... 82
v. The Guide to Salvation . ................................................................ 85
vi. Therapy and Teaching .................................................................. 87
vii. The Two Decisions . .................................................................... 91
viii. Time and Eternity ..................................................................... 93
ix. The Eternal Fixation . .................................................................. 96
Contents
six
seven
Attack
and
Fear
ten
God
ii. Projection Versus Extension .........................................................195
iii. The Willingness For Healing .......................................................198
iv. From Darkness to Light . ............................................................200
v. The Inheritance of God’s Son .......................................................202
vi. The Dynamics of the Ego ...........................................................203
vii. Experience and Perception ........................................................207
The Consistency
of
the
Kingdom
viii. The Problem and the Answer ....................................................210
eleven
G o d ’s P l a n F o r S a l v a t i o n
i. Introduction.................................................................................215
ii. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit . ................................................215
iii. The Mechanism of Miracles ........................................................217
iv. The Investment in Reality ...........................................................220
v. Seeking and Finding . ...................................................................222
vi. The Sane Curriculum .................................................................224
vii. The Vision of Christ . .................................................................226
viii. The Guide For Miracles ............................................................228
ix. Reality and Redemption.............................................................231
x. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability....................................................233
twelve
The Jour ney Back
The Problem
ii. The Direction of the Curriculum ...............................................147
iii. The Rationale For Choice .........................................................147
iv. The Holy Encounter ..................................................................149
v. The Light of the World ................................................................151
v.i The Power of Joint Decision ......................................................155
vii. Communication and the Ego-Body Equation ...........................157
viii. The Body As Means or End .....................................................161
ix. Healing as Corrected Perception . ..............................................163
x. The Acceptance of Reality ..........................................................165
xi. The Answer to Prayer ................................................................169
The Correction
of
thirteen
vi
Guilt
From Perception
to
237
237
239
241
244
246
249
Knowledge
i. Introduction.................................................................................254
ii. The Role of Healing.....................................................................254
iii. The Shadow of Guilt....................................................................256
iv. Release and Restoration...............................................................258
v. The Guarantee of Heaven..............................................................262
vi. The Testimony of Miracles............................................................264
vii. The Happy Learner.....................................................................265
viii. The Decision For Guiltlessness...................................................267
ix. The Way of Salvation....................................................................272
Error
i. Introduction................................................................................ 172
ii. Sanity and Perception ................................................................. 172
iii. Atonement as a Lesson in Sharing .............................................. 174
iv. The Unhealed Healer ................................................................. 176
v. The Awareness of the Holy Spirit . ............................................... 178
vi. Salvation and God’s Will ............................................................ 180
vii. Grandeur Versus Grandiosity ..................................................... 182
viii. The Inclusiveness of Creation . ................................................. 184
ix. The Decision to Forget .............................................................. 186
x. Magic Versus Miracles ................................................................. 189
xi. The Denial of God .................................................................... 191
of
i. Introduction
ii. Crucifixion By Guilt
iii. The Fear of Redemption iv. Healing and Time
v. The Two Emotions
vi. Finding the Present
vii. Attainment of the Real World
i. Introduction................................................................................146
nine
Ego
ii. The Message of the Crucifixion ...................................................101
iii. The Uses of Projection ...............................................................105
iv. The Relinquishment of Attack . ...................................................108
v. The Only Answer .........................................................................109
ii. Bargaining Versus Healing.............................................................121
iii. The Laws of Mind ......................................................................122
iv. The Unified Curriculum .............................................................124
v. The Recognition of Truth ............................................................125
vi. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind......................................129
vii. From Vigilance to Peace . ...........................................................132
viii. The Total Commitment ............................................................135
ix. The Defense of Conflict ............................................................138
x. The Extension of the Kingdom . ..................................................140
xi. The Confusion of Strength and Weakness.....................................142
xii. The State of Grace .....................................................................143
the
i. Introduction.................................................................................195
i. Introduction.................................................................................120
eight
and
i. Introduction.................................................................................100
fourteen
Bringing Illusions
to
Tr u t h
i. Introduction................................................................................ 274
ii. Guilt and Guiltlessness................................................................. 275
iii. Out of the Darkness.................................................................... 277
iv. Perception Without Deceit.......................................................... 279
v. The Recognition of Holiness........................................................ 283
vi. The Shift to Miracles ................................................................. 284
vii. The Test of Truth . ..................................................................... 287
vii
Contents
fifteen
The Purpose
of
Time
i. Introduction................................................................................... 292
ii. Uses of Time ................................................................................. 292
iii. Time and Eternity ........................................................................ 295
iv. Littleness Versus Magnitude ........................................................... 297
v. Practicing the Holy Instant ............................................................. 299
vi. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships . ................................. 302
vii. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God ........................................ 304
viii. The Holy Instant and Communication......................................... 306
ix. The Holy Instant and Real Relationships ...................................... 309
x. The Time of Christ ........................................................................ 312
xi. The End of Sacrifice ..................................................................... 315
sixteen
T h e F o r g i v e n e s s
of
Forg iveness
and
T h e D r e a m
and
the
viii
twenty
the
Body
T h e P r o m i s e
of
the
Resurrection
i. Introduction................................................................................... 402
ii. Holy Week...................................................................................... 402
iii. Thorns and Lilies .......................................................................... 403
iv. Sin as an Adjustment ..................................................................... 405
v. Entering the Ark ............................................................................ 408
vi. Heralds of Eternity ....................................................................... 410
vii. The Temple of the Holy Spirit....................................................... 412
viii. The Consistency of Means and End ............................................ 415
ix. The Vision of Sinlessness ............................................................... 417
twenty
one
T h e I n n e r P i c t u r e
i. Introduction................................................................................... 420
ii. The Imagined World ...................................................................... 420
iii. The Responsibility For Sight ........................................................ 422
iv. Faith, Belief, and Vision ................................................................. 425
v. The Fear to Look Within ................................................................ 428
vi. Reason and Perception ................................................................. 430
vii. Reason and Correction ............................................................... 432
viii. Perception and Wishes ................................................................ 434
ix. The Inner Shift ............................................................................. 437
twenty
two
Salvation
and the
Holy Relationship
i. Introduction................................................................................... 439
ii. The Message of the Holy Relationship . ......................................... 440
iii.Your Brother’s Sinlessness .............................................................. 442
iv. Reason and the Holy Relationship ................................................ 445
v. The Branching of the Road ............................................................ 447
vi. Weakness and Defensiveness .......................................................... 449
vii. Freedom and the Holy Spirit ....................................................... 450
Reality
i. Introduction................................................................................... 356
ii. Substitution as a Defense................................................................. 357
iii. The Basis of the Dream.................................................................. 359
iv. Light in the Dream......................................................................... 361
v. The Little Willingness .................................................................... 363
vi. The Happy Dream......................................................................... 365
vii. Dreams and the Body................................................................... 367
viii. I Need Do Nothing..................................................................... 370
ix. The Purpose of the Body............................................................... 372
x. The Delusional Thought System...................................................... 374
xi. The Passing of the Dream.............................................................. 377
Beyond
i. Introduction................................................................................... 378
ii. Healing and the Mind ................................................................... 378
iii. Sin Versus Error ............................................................................ 381
iv. The Unreality of Sin ...................................................................... 383
v. Obstacles to Peace .......................................................................... 387
Healing
i. Introduction................................................................................... 337
ii. Fantasy and Distorted Perception ................................................... 337
iii. The Forgiven World ...................................................................... 338
iv. Shadows of the Past ....................................................................... 340
v. Perception and the Two Worlds ....................................................... 343
vi. The Healed Relationship .............................................................. 346
vii. Practical Forgiveness .................................................................... 350
viii. The Need for Faith...................................................................... 352
ix. The Conditions of Forgiveness . .................................................... 354
eighteen
Illusions
i. Introduction................................................................................... 318
ii. True Empathy................................................................................. 319
iii. The Magnitude of Holiness............................................................ 320
iv. The Reward of Teaching................................................................. 322
v. Illusion and Reality of Love............................................................. 324
vi. Specialness and Guilt...................................................................... 327
vii. The Bridge to the Real World....................................................... 331
viii. The End of Illusions..................................................................... 334
seventeen
nineteen
twenty
three
T h e W a r A g a i n s t Y o u r s e l f
i. Introduction....................................................................................455
ii. The Irreconcilable Beliefs.................................................................456
iii. The Laws of Chaos ........................................................................459
iv. Salvation Without Compromise ......................................................463
v. The Fear of Life . .............................................................................465
ix
Contents
twenty
four
twenty
S p e c i a l n e s s
and
Separation
eight
i. Introduction................................................................................... 468
ii. Specialness as a Substitute For Love . .............................................. 468
iii. The Treachery of Specialness ......................................................... 471
iv. The Forgiveness of Specialness ....................................................... 474
v. Specialness and Salvation ................................................................ 475
vi. The Resolution of the Dream ...................................................... 477
vii. Salvation From Fear ..................................................................... 479
viii. The Meeting Place . .................................................................... 482
nine
T h e R e m e d y
i. Introduction................................................................................... 561
ii. The Closing of the Gap ................................................................. 562
iii. The Coming of the Guest ............................................................. 563
iv. God’s Witnesses ............................................................................. 565
v. Dream Roles . ................................................................................ 566
vi. The Changeless Dwelling Place ..................................................... 568
vii. Forgiveness and Peace .................................................................. 569
viii. The Lingering Illusion ................................................................ 570
ix. Christ and Anti-Christ................................................................... 572
x. The Forgiving Dream .................................................................... 574
thirty
twenty
i. Introduction................................................................................... 506
ii. The “Sacrifice” of Oneness . ........................................................... 506
iii. The Forms of Error ...................................................................... 508
iv. The Borderland ............................................................................. 510
v. Where Sin Has Left ........................................................................ 511
vi. The Little Hindrance .................................................................... 513
vii. The Appointed Friend ................................................................. 515
viii. Review of Principles .................................................................. 516
ix. The Immediacy of Salvation ......................................................... 520
x. For They Have Come .................................................................... 522
xi. The Remaining Task ..................................................................... 524
twenty
The Body
and
the
Dream
i. Introduction....................................................................................526
ii. The Picture of the Crucifixion ........................................................526
iii. The Fear of Healing .......................................................................529
iv. The Symbol of the Impossible ........................................................532
v. The Quiet Answer ...........................................................................533
vi. The Healing Example ....................................................................535
vii. The Purpose of Pain .....................................................................538
viii. The Illusion of Suffering ..............................................................539
ix. The “Hero” of the Dream ..............................................................543
Th e N e w B e g i n n i n g
i. Introduction................................................................................... 578
ii. Rules For Decision . ...................................................................... 578
iii. Freedom of Will ........................................................................... 582
iv. Beyond All Idols ............................................................................ 583
v. The Truth Behind Illusions ............................................................. 585
vi. The Only Purpose ........................................................................ 587
vii. The Justification For Forgiveness ................................................. 589
viii. The New Interpretation . ............................................................ 592
ix. Changeless Reality........................................................................ 593
Th e T r a n s i t i o n
seven
Fear
.. . T h e A w a k e n i n g
i. Introduction................................................................................... 485
ii. The Appointed Task ....................................................................... 485
iii. The Savior From the Dark ............................................................ 487
iv. The Fundamental Law of Perception ............................................. 490
v. The Joining of Minds ..................................................................... 492
vi. The State of Sinlessness ................................................................. 493
vii. The Special Function .................................................................. 495
viii. Commuting the Sentence ........................................................... 496
ix. The Principle of Salvation . ........................................................... 499
x. The Justice of Heaven .................................................................... 503
six
of
i. Introduction................................................................................... 546
ii. The Present Memory ..................................................................... 547
iii. Reversing Effect and Cause .......................................................... 549
iv. The Agreement to Join................................................................... 552
v. The Greater Joining ........................................................................ 554
vi. The Alternate to Dreams of Fear ................................................... 556
vii. The Secret Vows ........................................................................... 558
viii. The Beautiful Relationship ......................................................... 559
twenty
twenty
five
The Undoing
thirty
one
The Simplicity
of
Salvation
i. Introduction................................................................................... 596
ii. The Illusion of an Enemy . ............................................................. 599
iii. The Self-Accused . ........................................................................ 601
iv. The Real Alternative ..................................................................... 603
v. Self Concept Versus Self . ................................................................ 605
vi. Recognizing the Spirit . ................................................................ 609
vii. The Savior’s Vision ....................................................................... 611
viii. Choose Once Again ................................................................... 614
A p p e n d i x i - G l o s s a r y o f C o u r s e T e r m s ..............................................
Appendix ii-The Early Editions and Editing
o f A C o u r s e i n M i r ac l e s ....................................................................
619
627
xi
Foreword
T
his course is a beginning, not an end.Your Friend goes with you.You
are not alone. No one who calls on Him can call in vain. Whatever
troubles you, be certain that He has the answer and will gladly give it to
you if you simply turn to Him and ask it of Him. He will not withhold all
answers that you need for anything that seems to trouble you. He knows the
way to solve all problems and resolve all doubts. His certainty is yours.You
need but ask it of Him, and it will be given you.
You are as certain of arriving home as is the pathway of the sun laid down
before it rises, after it has set, and in the half-lit hours in between. Indeed,
your pathway is more certain still, for it cannot be possible to change the
course of those whom God has called to Him. Therefore obey your will, and
follow Him Whom you accepted as your Voice, to speak of what you really
want and really need. His is the Voice for God, and also yours. And thus He
speaks of freedom and of truth.
With these words, A Course in Miracles concludes its prescribed curriculum of 365
daily lessons, and it is with these words, too, that we begin our study.
A Course in Miracles (often called just “the Course”) is a self-study course for
retraining the mind that is spiritual, rather than religious, in its perspective.
Although it uses Christian terminology, it is ecumenical in its approach, and its
underlying ontology is reminiscent of ancient refrains, echoing the world’s most
hallowed traditions.
The Course is pragmatic in its method, and its aim is a peaceful mind: “Knowledge
is not the motivation for learning this course. Peace is.” Nevertheless, the Course
frequently emphasizes its simplicity. The story of the Course began when, in the midst of an environment of intense
competition and negative attitudes, Columbia University clinical psychologist
Dr.William T.Thetford decided he had had enough and declared to his colleague,
Dr. Helen Schucman, “There must be another way, and I’m determined to find
it.” Dr. Schucman vowed to help him.
What ensued was a dramatic progression of waking dreams for Schucman,
W365:2-3..
T8:1.
For example, see T9:29, 10:74 , and 15:39.
xiii
Foreword
which culminated in October 1965 with her experience of a voice which spoke
clearly in her mind, saying “This is a course in miracles. Please take notes.”
With Thetford’s support and assistance in transcribing her shorthand notes,
Schucman took down some fifteen hundred typewritten pages of A Course in
Miracles over a period of seven years.
Schucman did not claim to be the author of the material herself. As she often
explained, she heard a kind of inner dictation, and she felt compelled to write
it down, even though at times she disagreed with the content and resisted the
process. The voice which spoke through Helen clearly identifies himself as Jesus.
Nonetheless, one need not be Christian nor accept Christianity’s traditional
doctrines to benefit from the teachings of the Course. Indeed, traditional
Christians will at first find many of the pronouncements contained in this work
to be startling and perhaps unbelievable. Persistence and open-mindedness will
nevertheless be rewarded.
Completed in 1972, A Course in Miracles consists of three volumes—the Text,
the Workbook for Students, and the Manual for Teachers. The Course was first
published in book form by the Foundation for Inner Peace three years later, in
1975, after further editing by Kenneth Wapnick and Helen Schucman with only
minimal consultation with Thetford, despite the fact that he had been put in
charge of content. As a result of that later editing, about a quarter of the material
included in first five chapters of the Text was deleted and the remaining material
was rearranged and rewritten; a brief new section, the Clarification of Terms, was
also added.
The original transcript that became A Course in Miracles was produced as a
result of collaboration between Schucman and Thetford, whom many believe
were involved with each other in the “holy relationship” described in Chapters
17-22 of the Text. This edition of A Course in Miracles preserves the original
language of the dictation of those chapters, which were addressed to the two
collaborators as they worked together to produce the manuscript that became
the Course. The later editing changes the focus of these important chapters and
addresses them to a solitary reader, removing the mutuality that is explicit in the
original dictation.
The edition of A Course in Miracles that is reproduced in this volume is sometimes
referred to as the Hugh Lynn Cayce version because, upon completion, it had
been delivered to Hugh Lynn Cayce and others in 1972, before the manuscript was
subjected to the substantial editing process referred to above.This edition contains
the unabridged Text volume of the Course as it was completed by Schucman and
Thetford, as well as the Workbook for Students and the Manual for Teachers.
The only changes that have been made to the edition of the Course as completed
by Shucman and Thetford have been to correct obvious typographic errors and
misspellings, to modernize and render consistent punctuation and capitalization,
and to format the material for print publication. Apart from the simple section
and paragraph numbering which we include for ease of reference and navigation,
nothing has been added to or omitted from the main body of the work.
The Course frequently gives uncommon meanings to common words. For that
reason, a Glossary is provided in Appendix I to the Text as an aid to the beginning
student. A second Appendix provides an understanding of the editing process
that A Course in Miracles has undergone.
Both its history and detailed textual analysis clearly establish that this edition
is closer to the dictation that Helen Schucman received than other versions of the
Course that have been published. Great care has been taken in dealing with the
editorial issues presented by the original typed manuscript, and we trust that those
to whom this book comes will benefit by it as greatly as have we.
We are indebted to Robert Perry for his contribution of the Glossary and
“The Earlier Versions and the Editing of A Course in Miracles,” which are included
as Appendices to the Text in this edition. We have sought to emulate his high
standards of care and scholarship in preparing this book.
Finally, we would be remiss were we to fail to acknowledge the selfless support
provided to the Society by its members and others. From its earliest days, the
work of the Society has been enabled by generous financial support provided
by many individuals whose only benefit has been the satisfaction of fostering
the circulation of this sacred writing in the world. Publication of this edition,
in particular, has been underwritten by a substantial grant from a member
who wishes to remain anonymous. In addition, we want to acknowledge the
important contributions that have been made by a Course teacher and member
of our Society, Armando Brons, who has provided insightful editorial assistance
throughout the process of bringing this edition to print. To those supporters and
all of our members, we extend a sincere “thank you.” We are most grateful.
See Appendix II at pages 631 for a discussion of the direction that Bill be in charge of
decsions as to what material to include in the Course.
See Appendix II at pages 630-31 for a description of the Hugh Lynn Cayce manuscript.
Course in Miracles Society
xiv
xv
Introduction
T
his is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it
is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum.
It means only that you may elect what you want to take at a given time.
I:2
The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond
what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness
of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear,
but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.
3
This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
4
5
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
one
Introduction to Miracles
i.
Principles
of
Miracles
1. 1:1 There is no order of difficulty among miracles. One is not “harder”
or “bigger” than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are
maximal.
2. 2 Miracles as such do not matter.The only thing that matters is their Source,
which is far beyond human evaluation.
3. 3 Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love.The real miracle is the love
that inspires them. In this sense, everything that comes from love is a miracle.
4 4 All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life. His Voice will direct
you very specifically.You will be told all you need to know.
5. 5 Miracles are habits and should be involuntary. They should not be under
conscious control. Consciously selected miracles can be misguided.
6. 6 Miracles are natural. When they do not occur, something has gone wrong.
7. 7 Miracles are everyone’s right, but purification is necessary first.
8. 8 Miracles are healing because they supply a lack in that they are performed
by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less.
9. 9 Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are
always miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws.They
bring more love both to the giver and the receiver.
10. 10 The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is wrong, or better, is a
misunderstanding of their purpose. They are really used for and by believers.
11. 11 Prayer is the medium of miracles. Prayer is the natural communication
of the created with the Creator. Through prayer love is received, and through
miracles love is expressed.
12. 12 Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent lower-order or higherorder reality. This is the basic distinction between intellectualizing and thinking.
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO MIRACLES
One makes the physical and the other creates the spiritual, and we believe in
what we make or create.
13. 13 Miracles are both beginnings and endings. They thus alter the temporal
order. They are always affirmations of rebirth which seem to go back but really
go forward. They undo the past in the present and thus release the future.
14. 14.Miracles bear witness to truth. They are convincing because they arise
from conviction. Without conviction they deteriorate into magic, which is
mindless and therefore destructive, or rather the uncreative use of mind.
15. 15 Each day should be devoted to miracles.The purpose of time is to enable
man to learn to use it constructively. Time is thus a teaching device and a means
to an end. It will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning.
16. 16 Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating that it is more blessed to
give than to receive. They simultaneously increase the strength of the giver and
supply strength to the receiver.
17. 17 Miracles are the transcendence of the body. They are sudden shifts into
invisibility, away from a sense of lower-order reality. That is why they heal.
18. 18 A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service one individual can render
another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his
own and his neighbor’s inestimable worth simultaneously.
19. 19 Miracles make minds one in God. They depend on cooperation because
the Sonship is the sum of all the Souls God created. Miracles therefore rest on the
laws of eternity, not of time.
20. 20 Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar
of truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle.
21. 21 Miracles are natural expressions of total forgiveness. Through miracles,
man accepts God’s forgiveness by extending it to others.
22. 22 Miracles are associated with fear only because of the fallacious belief that
darkness can hide. Man believes that what he cannot see does not exist, and his
physical eyes cannot see in the dark.This is a very primitive solution and has led to
a denial of the Spiritual eye. The escape from darkness involves two stages:
A. 23 The recognition that darkness cannot hide. This step usually entails fear.
B. 24 The recognition that there is nothing you want to hide, even if you could.
This step brings escape from fear.
23. 25 Miracles rearrange perception and place the levels of perception in true per
The term “Spiritual eye” is later replaced by the Holy Spirit, and the “physical eye” becomes the
ego. The emphasis on the two ways of seeing, however, remains throughout.
i. Principles of
Miracles
spective. This heals at all levels because sickness comes from confusing the levels.
26
When you have become willing to hide nothing, you will not only be
willing to enter into communion but will also understand peace and joy. Your
commitment is not yet total, and that is why you still have more to learn than
to teach. When your equilibrium stabilizes, you will be able to teach as much as
you learn, which will give you the proper balance. Meanwhile, remember that no
effort is wasted, for unless you remember this, you cannot avail yourselves of my
efforts, which are limitless. Only eternity is real. Why not use the illusion of time
constructively?
24. 27 Miracles enable man to heal the sick and raise the dead because he made
sickness and death himself and can abolish both. You are a miracle, capable of
creating in the likeness of your Creator. Everything else is only your own nightmare and does not exist. Only the creations of light are real.
25. 28 Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when
completed, is the Atonement. This process works all the time and in all the dimensions of time.
29
I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook to begin.
When you offer a miracle unto any of my brothers, you do it unto yourself and
me. The reason you come before me is that I do not need miracles for my own
Atonement, but I stand at the end in case you fail temporarily. The purpose of
my part in the Atonement is the canceling out of all lacks of love which men
could not otherwise correct. The word “sin” should be changed to “lack of love”
because “sin” is a man-made word with threat connotations which he made up
himself. No real threat is involved anywhere. Nothing is gained by frightening
yourselves, and it is very destructive to do so.
26. 30 Miracles represent freedom from fear.“Atoning” really means “undoing.”The
undoing of fear is an essential part of the Atonement value of miracles.
31
The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything to you, or rather
to restore it to your awareness.You were given everything when you were created,
just as everyone was. When you have been restored to the recognition of your
original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. As you share
my inability to tolerate lack of love in yourself and others, you must join the Great
Crusade to correct it. The slogan for the Crusade is “Listen, learn and do”: Listen
to my voice, learn to undo error, and do something to correct it.
32
The power to work miracles belongs to you. I will provide the opportunities to do them, but you must be ready and willing since you are already able.
Doing them will bring conviction in the ability since conviction really comes
i. Principles of
through accomplishment. The ability is the potential; the achievement is its expression; and the Atonement is the purpose.
27. 33 A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers.
It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive.
34
The disciples were specifically told to be physicians of the Lord and to heal
others.They were also told to heal themselves and were promised that I would never
leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children
of God because they have professed me. “Heaven and earth shall pass away” simply
means that they will not continue to exist as separate states. My word, which is the
resurrection and the light, shall not pass away because light is eternal. You are the
work of God, and His work is wholly lovable and wholly loving.This is how a man
must think of himself in his heart because this is what he is.
28. 35 Miracles are a means of organizing different levels of consciousness.
36
Miracles come from the below or subconscious level. Revelations come
from the above or superconscious level. The conscious level is in between and
reacts to either sub- or superconscious impulses in varying ratios. Consciousness
is the level which engages in the world and is capable of responding to both.
Having no impulses from itself and being primarily a mechanism for inducing
response, it can be very wrong.
37 Revelation induces complete but temporary suspension of doubt and
fear. It represents the original form of communication between God and His
Souls, involving an extremely personal sense of closeness to creation which man
tries to find in physical relationships. Physical closeness cannot achieve this. The
subconscious impulses properly induce miracles, which are genuinely interpersonal and result in real closeness to others.This can be misunderstood by a personally willful consciousness as impulses toward physical gratification.
38
Revelation unites Souls directly with God. Miracles unite minds directly
with each other. Neither emanates from consciousness, but both are experienced
there.This is essential since consciousness is the state which induces action, though
it does not inspire it. Man is free to believe what he chooses, and what he does
attests to what he believes. The deeper levels of the subconscious always contain
the impulse to miracles, but man is free to fill its more superficial levels, which are
closer to consciousness, with the impulses of this world and to identify himself
with them. This results in denying himself access to the miracle level underneath.
In his actions, then, his relationships also become superficial, and miracle-inspired
relating becomes impossible.
29. 39 Miracles are a way of earning release from fear.
Miracles
Revelation induces a state in which fear has already been abolished.
Miracles are thus a means, and revelation is an end. Miracles do not depend on
revelation; they induce it. Revelation is intensely personal and cannot actually be
translated into conscious content at all. That is why any attempt to describe it in
words is usually incomprehensible. Revelation induces only experience. Miracles,
on the other hand, induce action. Miracles are more useful now because of their
interpersonal nature. In this phase of learning, working miracles is more important
because freedom from fear cannot be thrust upon you.
30. 41 Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring His
creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification. By perceiving the spirit, they adjust the
levels and see them in proper alignment.This places the spirit at the center, where
Souls can communicate directly.
31. 42 Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. Man should thank God for
what he really is.The Children of God are very holy, and the miracle honors their
holiness.
43
God’s creations never lose their holiness, although it can be hidden. The
miracle uncovers it and brings it into the light where it belongs. Holiness can
never be really hidden in darkness, but man can deceive himself about it. This
illusion makes him fearful because he knows in his heart it is an illusion, and he
exerts enormous efforts to establish its reality. The miracle sets reality where it
belongs. Eternal reality belongs only to the Soul, and the miracle acknowledges
only the truth. It thus dispels man’s illusions about himself and puts him in communion with himself and God.
32. 44 Christ inspires all miracles, which are really intercessions. They intercede
for man’s holiness and make his perceptions holy. By placing him beyond the
physical laws, they raise him into the sphere of celestial order. In this order, man
is perfect.
45
The Soul never loses its communion with God. Only the mind needs
Atonement. The miracle joins in the Atonement of Christ by placing the mind
in the service of the spirit. This establishes the proper function of the mind and
corrects its errors.
33. 46 Miracles honor man because he is lovable. They dispel illusions about him
and perceive the light in him. They thus atone for his errors by freeing him from
his own nightmares. They release him from a prison in which he has imprisoned
himself, and by freeing his mind from illusions, they restore his sanity. Man’s mind
can be possessed by illusions, but his spirit is eternally free. If a mind perceives
40
without love, it perceives an empty shell and is unaware of the spirit within it.
But the Atonement restores the Soul to its proper place.The mind that serves the
spirit is invulnerable.
34. 47 Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. By atoning for lack, they establish perfect protection. The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions.
The forgiven are filled with the Soul, and they forgive in return. It is the duty of
the released to release their brothers.
48
The forgiven are the means of Atonement.Those released by Christ must
join in releasing their brothers, for this is the plan of the Atonement. Miracles are
the way in which minds which serve the spirit unite with Christ for the salvation
or release of all God’s creations.
35. 49 Miracles are expressions of love, but it does not follow that they will
always have observable effects. I am the only one who can perform miracles
indiscriminately because I am the Atonement.You have a role in the Atonement,
which I will dictate to you. Ask me which miracles you should perform. This
spares you exhaustion because you will act under direct communication.
36. 50 Christ-controlled miracles are part of the Atonement, but Christ-guidance
is personal and leads to personal salvation. The impersonal nature of miracles is an
essential ingredient because this enables me to control their distribution. Christguidance leads to the highly personal experience of revelation. This is why it
involves personal choice. A guide does not control, but he does direct, leaving the
following up to you. “Lead us not into temptation” means “guide us out of our
own errors.” “Take up thy cross and follow me” means, “Recognize your errors
and choose to abandon them by following my guidance.”
51
Remember that error cannot really threaten truth, which can always
withstand it. Only the error is really vulnerable. You are free to establish your
kingdom where you see fit, but the right choice is inevitable if you remember
this:
52
The Soul is in a state of grace forever.
Man’s reality is only his Soul.
Therefore, man is in a state of grace forever.
53 Atonement undoes all errors in this respect and thus uproots the real
source of fear. Whenever God’s reassurances are experienced as threat, it is always
because you are defending misplaced and misdirected loyalty. That is what projection always involves. Error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others,
he does imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have
i. Principles of
Miracles
already made. This makes them vulnerable to the distortions of others since their
own perception of themselves is distorted. The miracle worker can only bless and
thus undoes their distortions and frees them from prison.
37. 54 Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at all levels
becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra- and
interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the doer’s perceptions are aligned with truth
as God created it.
38. 55 A miracle is a correction factor introduced into false thinking by me. It
acts as a catalyst, shaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly.
This places man under the Atonement principle, where his perception is healed.
Until this has occurred, revelation of the divine order is impossible.
39. 56 The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles because what It perceives
is true. It perceives both the creations of God and the creations of man. Among
the creations of man, it can also separate the true from the false by Its ability to
perceive totally rather than selectively. It thus becomes the proper instrument for
reality testing, which always involves the necessary distinction between the false
and the true.
40. 57 The miracle dissolves error because the Spiritual eye identifies error as
false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, darkness automatically disappears.
58
Darkness is lack of light, as sin is lack of love. It has no unique properties
of its own. It is an example of the “scarcity” fallacy, from which only error can
proceed. Truth is always abundant. Those who perceive and acknowledge that
they have everything have no need for driven behavior of any kind.
41. 59 The miracle acknowledges all men as your brothers and mine. It is a way
of perceiving the universal mark of God in them. The specialness of God’s Sons
does not stem from exclusion but from inclusion. All my brothers are special. If
they believe they are deprived of anything, their perception becomes distorted.
When this occurs, the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its
relationships. Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return. The
miracle calls him to return because it blesses and honors him even though he
may be absent in spirit.
60
“God is not mocked” is not a warning but a reassurance on this point.
God would be mocked if any of His creations lacked holiness. The creation is
whole, and the mark of wholeness is holiness.
42. 61 Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles. It thus corrects or atones
for the faulty perception of lack anywhere.
Here we begin to make the fundamental distinction between miracles
and projection. The stimulus must precede the response and will also determine
the kind of response that is evoked. Behavior is response, so that the question
“response to what?” becomes crucial. Since stimuli are identified through perception, you first perceive the stimulus and then behave accordingly. It follows,
then, that:
62
As ye perceive,
So shall ye behave.
63
The Golden Rule asks you to behave toward others as you would have
them behave toward you.This means that the perception of both must be accurate.
The Golden Rule is the rule for appropriate behavior.You cannot behave appropriately unless you perceive accurately because appropriate behavior depends on
lack of level confusion. The presence of level confusion always results in variable
reality testing and therefore in variability in behavioral appropriateness. Since you
and your neighbor are equal members of the same family, as you perceive both,
so you will behave toward both. The way to perceive for Golden Rule behavior
is to look out from the perception of your own holiness and perceive the holiness
of others.
65
The emptiness engendered by fear should be replaced by love because
love and its absence are in the same dimension, and correction cannot be undertaken except within a dimension. Otherwise, there has been a confusion of
levels. Death is a human affirmation of a belief in hate, or level confusion. That is
why the Bible says, “There is no death” and why I demonstrated that death does
not exist. I came to fulfill the law by reinterpreting it. The law itself, if properly
understood, offers only protection to man. It is those who have not yet “changed
their minds” who entered the “hellfire” concept into it.
66
I assure you that I will witness for anyone who lets me and to whatever
extent he permits it. Your witnessing demonstrates your belief and thus strengthens it. Those who witness for me are expressing through their miracles that they
have abandoned the belief in deprivation in favor of the abundance they have
learned belongs to them.
43. 67 A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing man from
his misplaced sense of isolation, deprivation, and lack.
68
Miracles are affirmations of Sonship, which is a state of completion and
abundance. Whatever is true and real is eternal and cannot change or be changed.
The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is already perfect, but the mind can
10
64
i. Principles of
Miracles
elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that
it cannot serve two masters.
69
The mind, if it elects to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul
creates along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it
retains its creative potential but places itself under tyrannous rather than genuinely
authoritative control. As a result it imprisons because such are the dictates of
tyrants. To change your mind means to place it at the disposal of true Authority.
70
The miracle is thus a sign that the mind has chosen to be led by Christ in
His service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow
Him. All shallow roots must be uprooted because they are not deep enough to
sustain you.The illusion that shallow roots can be deepened and thus made to hold
is one of the distortions on which the reversal of the Golden Rule rests. As these
false underpinnings are given up, the equilibrium is temporarily experienced as
unstable. However, the fact is that nothing is less stable than an orientation that
is upside down. Nor can anything which holds it that way be really conducive to
greater stability.
44. 71 Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind. By being one, this state
of mind goes out to anyone, even without the awareness of the miracle worker
himself.The impersonal nature of miracles is because the Atonement itself is one,
uniting all creations with their Creator.
45. 72 The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and the
acceptance of His Atonement. The mind is then in a state of grace and naturally
becomes gracious both to the host within and the stranger without. By bringing
in the stranger, he becomes your brother.
46. 73 A miracle is never lost. It touches many people you do not even know
and sometimes produces undreamed of changes in forces of which you are not
even aware. That is not your concern. The miracle will always bless you.
74
The miracles you are not asked to perform have not lost their value. They
are still expressions of your own state of grace, but the action aspect of the miracle
should be Christ-controlled because of His complete awareness of the whole
plan. The impersonal nature of miracle-mindedness ensures your grace, but only
Christ is in a position to know where grace can be bestowed.
47. 75 Miracle-mindedness means miracle-readiness. Readiness means that you
should always keep your perceptions straight, so that you will always be ready,
willing, and able. These are the essentials for “listen, learn, and do.” You must be
ready to listen, willing to learn, and able to do. Only the last is involuntary because
it is the application of miracles which must be Christ-controlled. The other two,
11
which are the voluntary aspects of miracle-mindedness, are up to you.
48. 76 Awe is an inappropriate response to miracles.
77
Revelation is literally unspeakable because it is an experience of unspeakable love. Awe should be reserved for revelation, to which it is perfectly and
correctly applicable. It is not appropriate for miracles because a state of awe is
worshipful. It implies that one of a lesser order stands before a greater one. This
is the case only when a Soul stands before its Creator. Souls are perfect creations
and experience awe only in the Presence of the Creator of perfection.
78
The miracle, on the other hand, is a sign of love among equals. Equals
cannot be in awe of one another because awe implies inequality. It is therefore an
inappropriate reaction to me. An elder brother is entitled to respect for his greater
experience and a reasonable amount of obedience for his greater wisdom. He is
also entitled to love because he is a brother and also to devotion if he is devoted.
It is only my devotion that entitles me to yours. There is nothing about me that
you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God.The main difference between us as yet is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state of true
holiness, which is only a potential in you.
79
“No man cometh unto the Father but by me” is among the most misunderstood statements in the Bible. It does not mean that I am in any way separate
or different from you except in time, which does not really exist at all. Actually,
the quotation is more meaningful if it is considered on a vertical rather than a
horizontal axis. Regarded along the vertical, man stands below me and I stand
below God. In the process of “rising up,” I am higher.This is because, without me,
the distance between God and man would be too great for you to encompass.
80
I bridge the distance as an elder brother to man on the one hand and as
a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge
of the Sonship, which I can render complete only to the extent to which I can
share it. This may appear to contradict the statement, “I and my Father are one,”
but there are still separate parts in the statement in recognition that the Father
is greater. (The original statement was “are of one kind”). The Holy Spirit is the
bringer of revelations. Revelations are indirectly inspired by me because I am close
to the Holy Spirit and alert to the revelation-readiness of my brothers. I can thus
bring down to them more than they can draw down to themselves.
49. 81 The Holy Spirit is the highest communication medium. Miracles do not
involve this type of communication because they are temporary communication
devices. When man returns to his original form of communication with God,
the need for miracles is over. The Holy Spirit mediates higher to lower com12
i. Principles of
Miracles
munication, keeping the direct channel from God to man open for revelation.
Revelation is not reciprocal. It is always from God to man. The miracle is reciprocal because it involves equality.
50. 82 The miracle is a learning device which lessens the need for time. In the
longitudinal or horizontal plane, the recognition of the true equality of all the
members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the
sudden shifts from horizontal to vertical perception which the miracle entails
introduces an interval from which the doer and the receiver both emerge much
farther along in time than they would otherwise have been.
83
The miracle thus has the unique property of shortening time by rendering the space of time it occupies unnecessary. There is no relationship between
the time a miracle takes and the time it covers. It substitutes for learning that
might have taken thousands of years. It does this by the underlying recognition
of perfect equality and holiness between the doer and the receiver on which the
miracle rests.
84
We said before that the miracle abolishes time. It does this by a process
of collapsing it and thus abolishing certain intervals within it. It does this, however,
within the larger temporal sequence. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval
which is not under the usual laws of time. Only in this sense is it timeless. By collapsing time it literally saves time, much as daylight saving time does. It rearranges
the distribution of light.
51. 85 The miracle is the only device which man has at his immediate disposal
for controlling time. Only revelation transcends time, having nothing to do with
time at all.
86 The miracle is much like the body in that both are learning aids which
aim at facilitating a state in which they are unnecessary. When the Soul’s original
state of direct communication is reached, neither the body nor the miracle serves
any purpose.While he believes he is in a body, however, man can choose between
loveless and miraculous channels of expression. He can make an empty shell, but
he cannot express nothing at all. He can wait, delay, paralyze himself, reduce his
creativity to almost nothing, and even introduce a developmental arrest or even
a regression. But he cannot abolish his creativity. He can destroy his medium of
communication but not his potential.
87
Man was not created by his own free will alone. Only what he creates is
his to decide.The basic decision of the miracle-minded is not to wait on time any
longer than is necessary.Time can waste as well as be wasted.The miracle-worker,
therefore, accepts the time-control factor gladly because he recognizes that every
13
collapse of time brings all men closer to the ultimate release from time in which
the Son and the Father are one.
88
Equality does not imply homogeneity now. When everyone recognizes
that he has everything, individual contributions to the Sonship will no longer be
necessary. When the Atonement has been completed, all talents will be shared by
all the Sons of God. God is not partial. All His Children have His total love, and all
His gifts are freely given to everyone alike. “Except ye become as little children”
means that, unless you fully recognize your complete dependence on God, you
cannot know the real power of the Son in his true relationship with the Father.
89
You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness.You never
really wanted peace before, so there was no point in being told how to achieve it.
No learning is acquired by anyone unless he wants to learn it and believes in some
way that he needs it. While the concept of lack does not exist in the creation of
God, it is very apparent in the creations of man. It is, in fact, the essential difference.
A need implies lack by definition. It involves the recognition that you would be
better off in a state which is somehow different from the one you are in.
90
Until the “separation,” which is a better term than the “fall,” nothing was
lacking. This meant that man had no needs at all. If he had not deprived himself,
he would never have experienced them. After the separation, needs became the
most powerful source of motivation for human action. All behavior is essentially
motivated by needs, but behavior itself is not a divine attribute. The body is the
mechanism for behavior. The belief that he could be better off is the reason why
man has this mechanism at his disposal.
91
Each one acts according to the particular hierarchy of needs he establishes
for himself. His hierarchy, in turn, depends on his perception of what he is—that
is, what he lacks. A sense of separation from God is the only lack he really needs to
correct.This sense of separation would never have occurred if he had not distorted
his perception of truth and thus perceived himself as lacking. The concept of any
sort of need hierarchy arose because, having made this fundamental error, he had
already fragmented himself into levels with different needs. As he integrates he
becomes one, and his needs become one accordingly.
92
Unified need produces unified action because it produces a lack of ambivalence. The concept of a need hierarchy, a corollary to the original error that
man can be separated from God, requires correction at its own level before the
error of perceiving levels at all can be corrected. Man cannot behave effectively
while he operates at split levels. However, while he does, correction must be
introduced from the bottom up. This is because he now operates in space, where
14
i. Principles of
Miracles
concepts such as “up” and “down” are meaningful. Ultimately, space is as meaningless as time. The concept is really one of space-time belief.
93
The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his
unbelief, which placed him in it originally. He can never control the effects of
fear himself because he made fear and believes in what he made. In attitude, then,
though not in content, he resembles his own Creator, Who has perfect faith in
His creations because He created them. Belief in a creation produces its existence.
That is why a man can believe in what no one else thinks is true. It is true for
him because it was made by him.
94
Every aspect of fear proceeds from upside-down perception. The more
truly creative devote their efforts to correcting perceptual distortions. The
neurotic devotes his to compromise.The psychotic tries to escape by establishing
the certain truth of his own errors. It is most difficult to free him by ordinary
means because he is more consistent in his own denial of truth. The miracle,
however, makes no such distinctions. It corrects errors because they are errors.
Thus, the next point to remember about miracles is:
52. 95 The miracle makes no distinction among degrees of misperception. It is a
device for perception-correction, effective quite apart from either the degree or
the direction of the error. This is its true indiscriminateness.
96
Christ-controlled miracles are selective only in the sense that they are
directed towards those who can use them for themselves. Since this makes it inevitable that they will extend them to others, a strong chain of Atonement is welded.
However, Christ-control takes no account at all of the magnitude of the miracle
itself because the concept of size exists in a plane that is itself unreal. Since the
miracle aims at restoring the awareness of reality, it would hardly be useful if it
were bound by the laws which govern the error it aims to correct. Only man
makes this kind of mistake. It is an example of the foolish consistency which his
own false beliefs have engendered.
97
The power and strength of man’s creative will must be understood before
the real meaning of denial can be appreciated and relinquished. It is not mere
negation. It is a positive miscreation. While the miscreation is necessarily believed
in by its maker, it does not exist at all at the level of true creation.
53. 98 The miracle compares what man has made with the higher level creation,
accepting what is in accord as true and rejecting the discord as false. All aspects of
fear are untrue because they do not exist at the higher creative level, and therefore do not exist at all. To whatever extent a man is willing to submit his beliefs
to this test, to that extent are perceptions corrected.
15
ii. Distortions of
In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle proceeds along the
following lines:
99
100
If perfect love casts out fear,
And if fear exists,
Then there is not perfect love.
But only perfect love really exists.
If there is fear,
It creates a state which does not exist.
Believe this and you will be free. Only God can establish this solution,
and this faith is His gift.
101
ii.
Distortions
of
Miracle Impulses
You are involved in unconscious distortions which are producing a
dense cover over miracle impulses and which make it hard for them to reach
consciousness. The nature of any interpersonal relationship is limited or defined
by what you want it to do. Relating is a way of achieving an outcome.The danger
of defenses lies in their propensity for holding misperceptions rigidly in place. All
actions which stem from reverse thinking are literally the behavioral expressions
of those who know not what they do. A rigid orientation can be extremely
reliable, even if it is upside-down. In fact, the more consistently upside-down it
is, the more reliable it is.
103
However, validity is still the ultimate goal, which reliability can only serve.
Hostility, triumph, vengeance, self-debasement, and all kinds of expressions of
lack of love are often very clearly seen in the fantasies which accompany them.
But it is a profound error to imagine that because these fantasies are so frequent or
occur so reliably that this implies validity. Remember that while validity implies
reliability, the relationship is not reversible.You can be wholly reliable and entirely
wrong. While a reliable instrument does measure something, what use is it unless
you discover what the “something” is? This course, then, will concentrate on
validity and let reliability fall naturally into place.
104
The confusion of miracle impulses with physical impulses is a major source
of perceptual distortion because it induces, rather than straightens out, the basic
level confusion which underlies the perception of all those who seek happiness
with the instruments of this world. Inappropriate physical impulses (or misdirected
miracle impulses) result in conscious guilt if expressed and depression if denied. All
102
16
Miracle Impulses
real pleasure comes from doing God’s will. This is because not doing it is a denial
of self. Denial of error results in projection. Correction of error brings release. “Lead
us not into temptation” means “do not let us deceive ourselves into believing that
we can relate in peace to God or to our brothers with anything external.”
105
Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful, and the holy.
Do not lose sight of this. The love of God for a little while must still be expressed
through one body to another because the real vision is still so dim. Everyone can
use his body best by enlarging man’s perception so he can see the real vision. This
vision is invisible to the physical eye.The ultimate purpose of the body is to render
itself unnecessary. Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation.
106
Fantasies of any kind are distorted forms of thinking because they always
involve twisting perception into unreality. Fantasy is a debased form of vision.
Vision and revelation are closely related, while fantasy and projection are more
closely associated because both attempt to control external reality according to
false internal needs. Twist reality in any way, and you are perceiving destructively.
Reality was lost through usurpation, which in turn produced tyranny. I told you
that you are now restored to your former role in the plan of Atonement, but you
must still choose freely to devote yourselves to the greater restoration. As long
as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete. Complete
restoration of the Sonship is the only true goal of the miracle-minded.
107
No fantasies are true. They are distortions of perception by definition. They
are a means of making false associations and obtaining pleasure from them.
Man can do this only because he is creative. But, although he can perceive false
associations, he can never make them real except to himself. Man believes in what
he creates. If he creates miracles, he will be equally strong in his belief in them.
The strength of his conviction will then sustain the belief of the miracle receiver.
And fantasies become totally unnecessary as the wholly satisfying nature of reality
becomes apparent to both.
17
i. Introduction
two
The Illusion of Separation
i.
Introduction
T
his section deals with a fundamental misuse of knowledge, referred to
in the Bible as the cause of the “fall,” or separation. There are some
definitions which I asked you to take from the dictionary which will be helpful
here. They are somewhat unusual since they are not the first definitions which
are given. Nevertheless, the fact that each of them does appear in the dictionary
should be reassuring.
2:2
Project (verb): to extend forward or out.
Project (noun): a plan in the mind.
World: a natural grand division.
We will refer later to projection as related to both mental health and mental
illness. We have already observed that man can create an empty shell, but he
cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of
projection.
4
The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was
not an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack.
Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-separation state was
essentially one in which man needed nothing.The “tree of knowledge” is also an
overly literal figure. These concepts need to be clarified before the real meaning
of the separation, or the “detour into fear,” can be fully understood.
5
To “project,” as defined above, is a fundamental attribute of God which He
gave to His Son. In the creation, God projected His creative ability from Himself
to the Souls He created, and He also imbued them with the same loving will to
create.The Soul has not only been fully created but has also been created perfect.
There is no emptiness in it. Because of its likeness to its Creator, it is creative.
No Child of God can lose this ability because it is inherent in what he is, but he
3
18
can use it inappropriately. Whenever projection is used inappropriately, it always
implies that some emptiness or lack exists and that it is in man’s ability to put his
own ideas there instead of truth.
6
If you consider carefully what this entails, the following will become quite
apparent:
7
First, the assumption is implicit that what God created can be changed by
the mind of man.
8
Second, the concept that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect or
wanting is accepted.
9
Third, the belief that man can distort the creations of God, including himself, is accepted.
10
Fourth, the idea that since man can create himself, the direction of his
own creation is up to him is implied.
11
These related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred in
the separation. None of this existed before, nor does it actually exist now. The
world was made as “a natural grand division,” or a projecting outward of God.
That is why everything that He created is like Him. Projection, as undertaken
by God, is very similar to the kind of inner radiance which the Children of the
Father inherit from Him. It is important to note that the term “project outward”
necessarily implies that the real source of projection is internal. This is as true of
the Son as of the Father.
12
The world, in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper
creation of man by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind. The
latter required the endowment of man by God with free will because all loving
creation is freely given. Nothing in these statements implies any sort of level
involvement or in fact anything except one continuous line of creation in which
all aspects are of the same order.
13
When the “lies of the serpent” were introduced, they were specifically called
“lies” because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth.
He does not have to continue to believe what is not true unless he chooses to
do so. All of his miscreations can literally disappear in “the twinkling of an eye”
because they are merely visual misperceptions. Man’s Spiritual eye can sleep, but a
sleeping eye can still see. What is seen in dreams seems to be very real. The Bible
mentions that “a deep sleep fell upon Adam,” and nowhere is there any reference
to his waking up.
14
The history of man in the world as he sees it has not yet been marked by any
genuine or comprehensive reawakening or rebirth. This is impossible as long as
19
ii.
Chapter 2: The Illusion of Separation
man projects in the spirit of miscreation. It still remains within him, however, to
project as God projected His own Spirit to him. In reality, this is his only choice
because his free will was given him for his own joy in creating the perfect.
15
All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception that man has the
ability to usurp the power of God. It can only be emphasized that he neither can
nor has been able to do this. In this fact lies the real justification for his escape from
fear. The escape is brought about by his acceptance of the Atonement, which
places him in a position to realize that his own errors never really occurred.
When the “deep sleep” fell upon Adam, he was in a condition to experience
nightmares because he was asleep. If a light is suddenly turned on while someone
is dreaming a fearful dream, he may initially interpret the light itself as a part of his
own dream and be afraid of it. However, when he awakens the light is correctly
perceived as the release from the dream, which is no longer accorded reality.
16
It is quite apparent that this release does not depend on the kind of
“knowledge” which is nothing more than deceiving lies. The knowledge which
illuminates rather than obscures is the knowledge which not only sets you free,
but which also shows you clearly that you are free.Whatever lies you may believe
are of no concern to the miracle, which can heal any of them with equal ease.
It makes no distinctions among misperceptions. Its sole concern is to distinguish
between truth on the one hand and all kinds of errors on the other. Some miracles
may seem to be of greater magnitude than others. But remember the first point
in this course—that there is no order of difficulty in miracles.
17
In reality, you are perfectly unaffected by all expressions of lack of love.
These can be either from yourself and others or from yourself to others or from
others to you. Peace is an attribute in you. You cannot find it outside. All mental
illness is some form of external searching. Mental health is inner peace. It enables
you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without and capable through your
own miracles of correcting the external conditions which proceed from lack of
love in others.
ii.
The Reinterpretation
of
Defenses
When you are afraid of anything, you are acknowledging its power to hurt
you. Remember that where your heart is, there is your treasure also. This means
that you believe in what you value. If you are afraid, you are valuing wrongly.
Human understanding will inevitably value wrongly and, by endowing all human
thoughts with equal power, will inevitably destroy peace. That is why the Bible
speaks of “The peace of God which passeth (human) understanding.” This peace
18
20
The Reinterpretation of Defenses
is totally incapable of being shaken by human errors of any kind. It denies the
ability of anything which is not of God to affect you in any way.
19
This is the proper use of denial. It is not used to hide anything but to correct
error. It brings all error into the light, and since error and darkness are the same,
it corrects error automatically. True denial is a powerful protective device. You
can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is not
a concealment device but a correction device. The “right mind” of the mentally
healthy depends on it. You can do anything I ask. I have asked you to perform
miracles and have made it clear that miracles are natural, corrective, healing, and
universal. There is nothing good they cannot do, but they cannot be performed
in the spirit of doubt.
20
God and the Souls He created are completely dependent on each other. The
creation of the Soul has already been perfectly accomplished, but the creation by
Souls has not. God created Souls so He could depend on them because He created
them perfectly. He gave them His peace so they could not be shaken and would
be unable to be deceived. Whenever you are afraid, you are deceived.Your mind
is not serving the Soul. This literally starves the Soul by denying its daily bread.
God offers only mercy. Your words should reflect only mercy because that is what
you have received, and that is what you should give.
21
Justice is a temporary expedient or an attempt to teach man the meaning of
mercy. Its judgmental side arises only because man is capable of injustice if that
is what his mind creates.You are afraid of God’s Will because you have used your
own will, which He created in the likeness of His own, to miscreate. What you do
not realize is that the mind can miscreate only when it is not free. An imprisoned
mind is not free by definition. It is possessed or held back by itself. Its will is
therefore limited and is not free to assert itself. The real meaning of “are of one
kind,” which was mentioned before, is “are of one mind or will.” When the will
of the Sonship and the Father are one, their perfect accord is Heaven.
22
Denial of error is a powerful defense of truth. You will note that we have
been shifting the emphasis from the negative to the positive use of denial. As we
have already stated, denial is not a purely negative device; it results in positive
miscreation. That is the way the mentally ill do employ it. But remember a very
early thought of your own—“Never underestimate the power of denial.” In the
service of the “right mind,” the denial of error frees the mind and reestablishes
the freedom of the will. When the will is really free, it cannot miscreate because it
recognizes only truth.
23
False projection arises out of false denial, not out of its proper use. My
21
own role in the Atonement is one of true projection; I can project to you the
affirmation of truth. If you project error to me or to yourself, you are interfering
with the process. My use of projection, which can also be yours, is not based on
faulty denial. It does involve, however, the very powerful use of the denial of errors.
The miracle worker is one who accepts my kind of denial and projection, unites
his own inherent abilities to deny and project with mine, and imposes them back
on himself and others. This establishes the total lack of threat anywhere. Together
we can then work for the real time of peace, which is eternal.
24
The improper use of defenses is quite widely recognized, but their proper
use had not been sufficiently understood as yet. They can indeed create man’s
perception both of himself and of the world.They can distort or correct depending
on what you use them for.
25
Denial should be directed only to error, and projection should be reserved
only for truth.You should truly give as you have truly received.The Golden Rule
can work effectively only on this basis.
26
Intellectualization is a term which stems from the mind-brain confusion.
“Right-mindedness” is the device which defends the right mind and gives it control
over the body. “Intellectualization” implies a split, while “right-mindedness”
involves healing.
27
Withdrawal is properly employed in the service of withdrawing from the
meaningless. It is not a device for escape, but for consolidation.There is only One
Mind.
28
Dissociation is quite similar. You should split off or dissociate yourself from
error but only in defense of integration.
29
Detachment is essentially a weaker form of dissociation.
30
Flight can be undertaken in whatever direction you choose, but note that
the concept itself implies flight from something. Flight from error is perfectly
appropriate.
31
Distantiation can be properly used as a way of putting distance between
yourself and what you should fly from.
32
Regression is an effort to return to your own original state. It can thus be
utilized to restore, rather than to go back to the less mature.
33
Sublimation should be a redirection of effort to the sublime.
34
There are many other so-called “dynamic” concepts which are profound
errors due essentially to the misuse of defenses. Among them is the concept of
different levels of aspiration, which actually result from level confusion. However,
the main point to be understood from this section is that you can defend truth as
22
ii.
well as error and, in fact, much better.
35
The means are easier to clarify after the value of the goal itself is firmly
established. Everyone defends his own treasure. You do not have to tell him to
do so because he will do it automatically. The real questions still remain. What
do you treasure, and how much do you treasure it? Once you have learned to
consider these two questions and to bring them into all your actions as the true
criteria for behavior, I will have little difficulty in clarifying the means.You have
not learned to be consistent about this as yet. I have therefore concentrated on
showing you that the means are available whenever you ask. You can, however,
save a lot of time if you do not extend this step unduly. The correct focus will
shorten it immeasurably.
36
The Atonement is the only defense which cannot be used destructively.
That is because, while everyone must eventually join it, it is not a device which
was generated by man. The Atonement principle was in effect long before the
Atonement itself began. The principle was love, and the Atonement itself was an
act of love. Acts were not necessary before the separation because the time-space
belief did not exist. It was only after the separation that the defense of Atonement
and the necessary conditions for its fulfillment were planned.
37
It became increasingly apparent that all of the defenses which man can
choose to use constructively or destructively were not enough to save him. It was
therefore decided that he needed a defense which was so splendid that he could
not misuse it, although he could refuse it. His choice could not, however, turn it
into a weapon of attack, which is the inherent characteristic of all other defenses.
The Atonement thus becomes the only defense which is not a two-edged sword.
38
The Atonement actually began long before the crucifixion. Many Souls
offered their efforts on behalf of the separated ones, but they could not withstand
the strength of the attack and had to be brought back. Angels came, too, but their
protection did not suffice because the separated ones were not interested in peace.
They had already split their minds and were bent on further dividing rather than
reintegrating. The levels they introduced into their minds turned against each
other, and they established differences, divisions, cleavages, dispersions, and all the
other concepts related to the increasing splits which they produced.
39
Not being in their right minds, they turned their defenses from protection
to assault and acted literally insanely. It was essential to introduce a split-proof
device which could be used only to heal, if it were used at all.The Atonement was
built into the space-time belief in order to set a limit on the need for the belief
and ultimately to make learning complete. The Atonement is the final lesson.
23
Learning itself, like the classrooms in which it occurs, is temporary. The ability
to learn has no value when change of understanding is no longer necessary. The
eternally creative have nothing to learn. Only after the separation was it necessary
to direct the creative forces to learning because changed behavior had become
mandatory.
40
Men can learn to improve their behavior and can also learn to become
better and better learners.This serves to bring them into closer and closer accord
with the Sonship, but the Sonship itself is a perfect creation, and perfection is not
a matter of degree. Only while there are different degrees is learning meaningful.
The “evolution” of man is merely a process by which he proceeds from one
degree to the next. He corrects his previous missteps by stepping forward. This
represents a process which is actually incomprehensible in temporal terms because
he returns as he goes forward.
41
The Atonement is the device by which he can free himself from the past
as he goes ahead. It undoes his past errors, thus making it unnecessary for him
to keep retracing his steps without advancing to his return. In this sense the
Atonement saves time, but like the miracle which serves, it does not abolish it. As
long as there is need for Atonement, there is need for time. But the Atonement as
a completed plan does have a unique relationship to time. Until the Atonement is
finished, its various phases will proceed in time, but the whole Atonement stands
at time’s end. At this point, the bridge of the return has been built.
42
The Atonement is a total commitment.You still think this is associated with
loss. This is the same mistake all the separated ones make in one way or another.
They cannot believe that a defense which cannot attack is the best defense.This is
what is meant by “the meek shall inherit the earth.”They will literally take it over
because of their strength. A two-way defense is inherently weak precisely because
it has two edges and can turn against the self very unexpectedly. This tendency
cannot be controlled except by miracles.
43
The miracle turns the defense of Atonement to the protection of the inner self,
which as it becomes more and more secure assumes its natural talent of protecting
others. The inner self knows itself as both a brother and a Son. You know that
when defenses are disrupted, there is a period of real disorientation accompanied
by fear, guilt, and usually vacillations between anxiety and depression.This course
is different in that defenses are not being disrupted but reinterpreted, even though
you may experience it as the same thing. In the reinterpretation of defenses, only
their use for attack is lost. Since this means they can be used only one way, they
become much stronger and much more dependable. They no longer oppose the
24
ii.
Atonement but greatly facilitate it.
44
The Atonement can only be accepted within you. You have perceived it
largely as external thus far, and that is why your experience of it has been minimal.
The reinterpretation of defenses is essential in releasing the inner light. Since the
separation, man’s defenses have been used almost entirely to defend himself against
the Atonement and thus maintain the separation. They themselves generally see
this as a need to protect the body. The many body fantasies with which men’s
minds are engaged arise from the distorted belief that the body can be used as a
means for attaining “atonement.”
45
Perceiving the body as a temple is only the first step in correcting this kind
of distortion. It alters part of the misperception but not all of it. It does recognize,
however, that the concept of Atonement in physical terms is not appropriate.
However, the next step is to realize that a temple is not a building at all. Its real
holiness lies in the inner altar around which the building is built.The inappropriate
emphasis men have put on beautiful church buildings is a sign of their fear of
Atonement and their unwillingness to reach the altar itself.The real beauty of the
temple cannot be seen with the physical eye.The Spiritual eye, on the other hand,
cannot see the building at all because it has perfect sight. It can, however, see the
altar with perfect clarity.
46
For perfect effectiveness, the Atonement belongs at the center of the inner
altar, where it undoes the separation and restores the wholeness of the mind.
Before the separation the mind was invulnerable to fear because fear did not
exist. Both the separation and the fear are miscreations of the mind, which must
be undone. This is what is meant by “the restoration of the temple.” It does not
mean the restoration of the building but the opening of the altar to receive the
Atonement. This heals the separation and places within man the one defense
against all separation mind-errors which can make him perfectly invulnerable.
47
The acceptance of the Atonement by everyone is only a matter of time. In
fact, both time and matter were created for this purpose.This appears to contradict
free will because of the inevitability of the final decision. If you review the idea
carefully, however, you will realize that this is not true. Everything is limited in
some way by the manner of its creation. Free will can temporize and is capable
of enormous procrastination. But it cannot depart entirely from its Creator,Who
set the limits on its ability to miscreate by virtue of its own real purpose.
48
The misuse of will engenders a situation which in the extreme becomes
altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless.
Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better
25
iii.
way. As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual
turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the Spiritual eye, simultaneously
weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the
two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time
and can become very acute, but the outcome is as certain as God.
49
The Spiritual eye literally cannot see error and merely looks for Atonement.
All the solutions which the physical eyes seek dissolve in its sight. The Spiritual
eye, which looks within, recognizes immediately that the altar has been defiled
and needs to be repaired and protected. Perfectly aware of the right defense, It
passes over all others, looking past error to truth. Because of the real strength
of Its vision, It pulls the will into Its service and impels the mind to concur.
This reestablishes the true power of the will and makes it increasingly unable to
tolerate delay. The mind then realizes with increasing certainty that delay is only
a way of increasing unnecessary pain, which it need not tolerate at all. The pain
threshold drops accordingly, and the mind becomes increasingly sensitive to what
it would once have regarded as very minor intrusions of discomfort.
50
The Children of God are entitled to perfect comfort, which comes from a sense
of perfect trust. Until they achieve this, they waste themselves and their true creative
powers on useless attempts to make themselves more comfortable by inappropriate
means. But the real means is already provided and does not involve any effort at all
on their part. Their egocentricity usually misperceives this as personally insulting,
an interpretation which obviously arises from their misperception of themselves.
Egocentricity and communion cannot coexist. Even the terms are contradictory.
51
The Atonement is the only gift that is worthy of being offered to the altar
of God. This is because of the inestimable value of the altar itself. It was created
perfect and is entirely worthy of receiving perfection. God is lonely without His
Souls, and they are lonely without Him. Men must learn to perceive the world as
a means of healing the separation. The Atonement is the guarantee that they will
ultimately succeed.
iii.
Healing
as
Release
from
Fear
The emphasis will now be on healing. The miracle is the means, the
Atonement is the principle, and healing is the result. Those who speak of “a
miracle of healing” are combining two orders of reality inappropriately. Healing
is not a miracle. The Atonement or the final miracle is a remedy, while any type of
healing is a result. The kind of error to which Atonement is applied is irrelevant.
Essentially, all healing is the release from fear. To undertake this, you cannot be
52
26
Healing as Release from Fear
fearful yourself.You do not understand healing because of your own fear.
53
A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at all levels. Illness,
which is really “not-right-mindedness,” is the result of level confusion in the
sense that it always entails the belief that what is amiss in one level can adversely
affect another.We have constantly referred to miracles as the means of correcting
level confusion, and all mistakes must be corrected at the level on which they
occur. Only the mind is capable of error. The body can act erroneously, but this
is only because it is responding to mis-thought. The body cannot create, and the
belief that it can, a fundamental error, produces all physical symptoms.
54
All physical illness represents a belief in magic. The whole distortion which
created magic rests on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter which
the mind cannot control. This error can take two forms—it can be believed that
the mind can miscreate in the body or that the body can miscreate in the mind.
If it is understood that the mind, which is the only level of creation, cannot create
beyond itself, neither type of confusion need occur.
55
The reason only the mind can create is more obvious than may be
immediately apparent. The Soul has been created. The body is a learning device
for the mind. Learning devices are not lessons in themselves. Their purpose is
merely to facilitate the thinking of the learner. The most that a faulty use of a
learning device can do is to fail to facilitate learning. It has no power in itself to
introduce actual learning errors.
56
The body, if properly understood, shares the invulnerability of the Atonement
to two-edged application. This is not because the body is a miracle but because
it is not inherently open to misinterpretation. The body is merely a fact in human
experience. Its abilities can be and frequently are over-evaluated. However, it
is almost impossible to deny its existence. Those who do so are engaging in a
particularly unworthy form of denial. The term “unworthy” here implies simply
that it is not necessary to protect the mind by denying the unmindful. There is
little doubt that the mind can miscreate. If one denies this unfortunate aspect of
the mind’s power, one is also denying the power itself.
57
All material means which man accepts as remedies for bodily ills are merely
restatements of magic principles. It was the first level of the error to believe
that the body created its own illness. It is a second misstep to attempt to heal it
through non-creative agents. It does not follow, however, that the use of these
very weak corrective devices are evil. Sometimes the illness has a sufficiently
great hold over a mind to render a person inaccessible to Atonement. In this case
it may be wise to utilize a compromise approach to mind and body, in which
27
something from the outside is temporarily given healing belief.
58
This is because the last thing that can help the non-right-minded, or the
sick, is an increase in fear. They are already in a fear-weakened state. If they are
inappropriately exposed to an “undiluted” miracle, they may be precipitated
into panic. This is particularly likely to occur when upside-down perception has
induced the belief that miracles are frightening.
59
The value of the Atonement does not lie in the manner in which it is
expressed. In fact, if it is truly used, it will inevitably be expressed in whatever
way is most helpful to the receiver. This means that a miracle to attain its full
efficacy must be expressed in a language which the recipient can understand
without fear. It does not follow by any means that this is the highest level of
communication of which he is capable. It does mean, however, that it is the
highest level of communication of which he is capable now. The whole aim of
the miracle is to raise the level of communication, not to impose regression in the
improper sense upon it.
60
Before miracle workers are ready to undertake their function in this world,
it is essential that they fully understand the fear of release. Otherwise, they may
unwittingly foster the belief that release is imprisonment, a belief that is very
prevalent. This misperception arose from the underlying misbelief that harm can
be limited to the body. This was because of the much greater fear that the mind
can hurt itself. Neither error is really meaningful because the miscreations of the
mind do not really exist. This recognition is a far better protective device than
any form of level confusion because it introduces correction at the level of the
error.
61
It is essential to remember that only the mind can create. Implicit in this
is the corollary that correction belongs at the thought level. To repeat an earlier
statement and to extend it somewhat, the Soul is already perfect and therefore
does not require correction. The body does not really exist except as a learning
device for the mind.This learning device is not subject to errors of its own because
it was created but is not creating. It should be obvious, then, that correcting the
creator or inducing it to give up its miscreations is the only application of creative
ability which is truly meaningful.
62
Magic is essentially mindless or the miscreative use of the mind. Physical
medications are forms of “spells.” Those who are afraid to use the mind to heal
should not attempt to do so. The very fact that they are afraid has made them
vulnerable to miscreation.They are therefore likely to misunderstand any healing
they might induce and, because egocentricity and fear usually occur together, may
28
iii.
Healing as Release from Fear
be unable to accept the real Source of the healing. Under these conditions, it is
safer for them to rely temporarily on physical healing devices because they cannot
misperceive them as their own creations. As long as their sense of vulnerability
persists, they should be preserved from even attempting miracles.
63
We have already said that the miracle is an expression of miracle-mindedness.
Miracle-mindedness merely means right-mindedness in the sense that we are now
using it. The right-minded neither exalt nor depreciate the mind of the miracle
worker or the miracle receiver. However, as a creative act, the miracle need not
await the right-mindedness of the receiver. In fact, its purpose is to restore him to
his right mind. It is essential, however, that the miracle worker be in his right mind
or he will be unable to reestablish right-mindedness in someone else.
64
The healer who relies on his own readiness is endangering his understanding.
He is perfectly safe as long as he is completely unconcerned about his readiness
but maintains a consistent trust in mine. If your miracle working propensities are
not functioning properly, it is always because fear has intruded on your rightmindedness and has literally upset it (or turned it upside-down). All forms of notright-mindedness are the result of refusal to accept the Atonement for yourself. If
the miracle worker does accept it, he places himself in a position to recognize that
those who need to be healed are simply those who have not realized that rightmindedness is healing.
65
The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for
himself. This means that he recognizes that mind is the only creative level and
that its errors are healed by the Atonement. Once he accepts this, his mind can
only heal. By denying his mind any destructive potential and reinstating its purely
constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the
level confusion of others. The message he then gives to others is the truth that
their minds are similarly constructive and that their miscreations cannot hurt them.
By affirming this, the miracle worker releases the mind from over-evaluating its
own learning device (the body) and restores the mind to its true position as the
learner.
66
It should be emphasized again that the body does not learn any more
than it creates. As a learning device, it merely follows the learner, but if it is
falsely endowed with self-initiative, it becomes a serious obstruction to the very
learning it should facilitate. Only the mind is capable of illumination. The Soul is
already illuminated, and the body in itself is too dense. The mind, however, can
bring its illumination to the body by recognizing that density is the opposite of
intelligence and therefore unamenable to independent learning. It is, however,
29
iv.
easily brought into alignment with a mind which has learned to look beyond
density toward light.
67
Corrective learning always begins with the awakening of the Spiritual eye
and the turning away from the belief in physical sight. The reason this so often
entails fear is because man is afraid of what his Spiritual eye will see. We said
before that the Spiritual eye cannot see error and is capable only of looking
beyond it to the defense of Atonement. There is no doubt that the Spiritual eye
does produce extreme discomfort by what it sees.Yet what man forgets is that the
discomfort is not the final outcome of its perception. When the Spiritual eye is
permitted to look upon the defilement of the altar, it also looks immediately toward
the Atonement.
68
Nothing the Spiritual eye perceives can induce fear. Everything that results from
accurate spiritual awareness is merely channelized toward correction. Discomfort
is aroused only to bring the need for correction forcibly into awareness. What the
physical eye sees is not corrective nor can it be corrected by any device which
can be seen physically. As long as a man believes in what his physical sight tells
him, all his corrective behavior will be misdirected. The real vision is obscured
because man cannot endure to see his own defiled altar. But since the altar has
been defiled, his state becomes doubly dangerous unless it is perceived.
69
The fear of healing arises, in the end, from an unwillingness to accept the
unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. Man is not willing to look on what he has
done to himself. Healing is an ability lent to man after the separation, before which it
was completely unnecessary. Like all aspects of the space-time belief, healing ability
is temporary. However, as long as time persists, healing is needed as a means for
human protection. This is because healing rests on charity, and charity is a way of
perceiving the perfection of another even if he cannot perceive it himself.
70
Most of the loftier concepts of which man is capable now are timedependent. Charity is really a weaker reflection of a much more powerful loveencompassment which is far beyond any form of charity that man can conceive
of as yet. Charity is essential to right-mindedness in the limited sense in which
right-mindedness can now be attained. Charity is a way of looking at another as if
he had already gone far beyond his actual accomplishments in time. Since his own
thinking is faulty, he cannot see the Atonement for himself or he would have no
need for charity. The charity which is accorded him is both an acknowledgment
that he is weak and a recognition that he could be stronger.
71
The way in which both of these perceptions are stated clearly implies their
dependence on time, making it quite apparent that charity lies within the human
30
Fear as Lack of Love
limitations, though toward its higher levels. We said before that only revelation
transcends time.The miracle, as an expression of true human charity, can only shorten
time at most. It must be understood, however, that whenever a man offers a miracle
to another, he is shortening the suffering of both. This introduces a correction into
the whole record which corrects retroactively as well as progressively.
iv.
Fear
as
Lack
of
Love
You believe that “being afraid” is involuntary, something beyond your control.
Yet I have told you several times that only constructive acts should be involuntary.
We have said that Christ-control can take over everything that does not matter,
while Christ-guidance can direct everything that does if you so choose. Fear
cannot be Christ-controlled, but it can be self-controlled. It prevents me from
controlling it.The correction is therefore a matter of your will because its presence
shows that you have raised the unimportant to a higher level than it warrants.You
have thus brought it under your will, where it does not belong. This means that
you feel responsible for it. The level confusion here is obvious.
73
The reason I cannot control fear for you is that you are attempting to raise
to the mind level the proper content of lower-order reality. I do not foster level
confusion, but you can choose to correct it.You would not tolerate insane behavior
on your part and would hardly advance the excuse that you could not help it.
Why should you tolerate insane thinking? There is a confusion here which you
would do well to look at clearly. You believe that you are responsible for what you
do but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you
think because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice.
74
What you do comes from what you think.You cannot separate yourself from the
truth by “giving” autonomy to behavior. This is controlled by me automatically
as soon as you place what you think under my guidance. Whenever you are
afraid, it is a sure sign that you have allowed your mind to miscreate or have not
allowed me to guide it. It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome of
mis-thought can result in healing.When you are fearful you have willed wrongly.
This is why you feel responsible for it. You must change your mind, not your
behavior, and this is a matter of will.
75
You do not need guidance except at the mind level. Correction belongs only
at the level where creation is possible. The term does not mean anything at the
symptom level, where it cannot work.The correction of fear is your responsibility.
When you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it is not. You should
ask instead for help in the conditions which have brought the fear about. These
72
31
v.
conditions always entail a separated mind willingness. At that level, you can help
it. You are much too tolerant of mind wandering, thus passively condoning its
miscreations. The particular result does not matter, but the fundamental error
does. The correction is always the same. Before you will to do anything, ask me if
your will is in accord with mine. If you are sure that it is, there will be no fear.
76
Fear is always a sign of strain, which arises whenever the will to do conflicts
with what you do. This situation arises in two ways:
77
First, you can will to do conflicting things, either simultaneously or successively.
This produces conflicted behavior, which is intolerable to yourself because the
part of the will that wants to do something else is outraged.
78
Second, you can behave as you think you should but without entirely willing
to do so. This produces consistent behavior but entails great strain within the self.
In both cases, the will and the behavior are out of accord, resulting in a situation
in which you are doing what you do not will. This arouses a sense of coercion,
which usually produces rage. The rage then invades the mind and projection in
the wrong sense is likely to follow. Depression or anxiety is virtually certain.
79
Remember that whenever there is fear, it is because you have not made
up your mind. Your will is split, and your behavior inevitably becomes erratic.
Correcting at the behavioral level can shift the error from the first to the second
type of strain described above but will not obliterate the fear. It is possible to reach
a state in which you bring your will under my guidance without much conscious
effort, but this implies habit patterns which you have not developed dependably
as yet. God cannot ask more than you will. The strength to do comes from your
own undivided will to do. There is no strain in doing God’s Will as soon as you
recognize that it is also your own.
80
The lesson here is quite simple but particularly apt to be overlooked. I will
therefore repeat it, urging you to listen. Only your mind can produce fear. It does
so whenever it is conflicted in what it wills, thus producing inevitable strain
because willing and doing become discordant.This cannot be corrected by better
doing, but it can be corrected by higher willing.
v.
The Correction
for
Lack
of
Love
The first corrective step is know first that this is an expression of fear.Then say
to yourself that you must somehow have willed not to love or that the fear which
arises from behavior-will conflict could not have arisen, then the whole process
is nothing more than a series of pragmatic steps in the larger process of accepting
81
32
The Correction for Lack of Love
the Atonement as the remedy. These steps can be summarized as follows:
1. 82 Know first that this is fear.
2. 83 Fear arises from lack of love.
3. 84 The only remedy for lack of love is perfect love.
4. 85 Perfect love is the Atonement.
86
We have emphasized that the miracle, or the expression of the Atonement,
is always a sign of real respect from the worthy to the worthy. This worth is reestablished by the Atonement. It is obvious, then, that when you are afraid you have
placed yourself in a position where you need Atonement because you have done
something loveless, having willed without love. This is precisely the situation for
which the Atonement was offered.The need for the remedy inspired its creation.
As long as you recognize only the need for the remedy, you will remain fearful.
However, as soon as you remedy it, you have also abolished the fear. This is how
true healing occurs.
87
Everyone experiences fear, and no one enjoys it.Yet it would take very little
right-thinking to realize why fear occurs. Very few people appreciate the real
power of the mind, and no one remains fully aware of it all the time. However,
if anyone hopes to spare himself from fear, there are some things he must realize
and realize fully.The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative
force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating and always as you will. Many of
your ordinary expressions reflect this. For example, when you say, “Don’t give it
a thought,” you imply that if you do not think about something, it will have no
effect on you. And this is true enough.
88
On the other hand, many other expressions clearly illustrate the prevailing
lack of awareness of thought-power. For example, you say, “Just an idle thought,”
and mean that the thought has no effect. You also speak of some actions as
“thoughtless,” implying that if the person had thought, he would not behave as
he did. While expressions like “think big” give some recognition to the power
of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow
when you say it because you do not really think that you will.
89
It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power surge
that can literally move mountains. It appears at first glance that to believe such
power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason why you
do not believe it. People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real
control because they are literally afraid of them. Many psychotherapists attempt to
help people who are afraid, say, of their death wishes by depreciating the power of
the wish.They even try to “free” the patient by persuading him that he can think
33
whatever he wants without any real effect at all.
90
There is a real dilemma here which only the truly right-minded can escape.
Death wishes do not kill in the physical sense, but they do kill spiritual awareness.
All destructive thinking is dangerous. Given a death wish, a man has no choice
except to act upon the thought or behave contrary to it. He thus chooses only
between homicide and fear.The other possibility is that he depreciates the power
of his thought. This is the usual psychoanalytic approach. It does allay guilt but
at the cost of rendering thinking impotent. If you believe that what you think
is ineffectual you may cease to be overly afraid of it, but you are hardly likely to
respect it.
91
The world is full of examples of how man has depreciated himself because he
is afraid of his own thoughts. In some forms of insanity, thoughts are glorified, but
this is only because the underlying depreciation was too effective for tolerance.
The truth is that there are no “idle” thoughts. All thinking produces form at some
level. The reason people are afraid of ESP and so often react against it is because
they know that thoughts can hurt them. Their own thoughts have made them
vulnerable.
92
You who constantly complain about fear still persist in creating it. I told you
before that you cannot ask me to release you from fear because I know it does
not exist, but you do not. If I merely intervened between your thoughts and
their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect, the most
fundamental law there is in this world. I would hardly help if I depreciated the
power of your own thinking. This would be in direct opposition to the purpose
of this course. It is much more helpful to remind you that you do not guard your
thoughts carefully except for a small part of the day and somewhat inconsistently
even then. You may feel at this point that it would take a miracle to enable you
to do this, which is perfectly true.
93
Men are not used to miraculous thinking, but they can be trained to think
that way. All miracle workers need that kind of training. I cannot let them leave
their minds unguarded, or they will not be able to help me. Miracle working
entails a full realization of the power of thought and real avoidance of miscreation.
Otherwise, a miracle will be necessary to set the mind itself straight, a circular
process which would hardly foster the time collapse for which the miracle was
intended. Nor would it induce the healthy respect for true cause and effect
which every miracle worker must have.
94
Both miracles and fear come from thoughts, and if you were not free to
choose one, you would also not be free to choose the other. By choosing the
34
v.
The Correction for Lack of Love
miracle, you have rejected fear.You have been afraid of God, of me, of yourselves,
and of practically everyone you know at one time or another. This is because
you have misperceived or miscreated us and believe in what you have made.You
would never have done this if you were not afraid of your own thoughts. The
vulnerable are essentially miscreators because they misperceive creation.
95
You persist in believing that when you do not consciously watch your
mind, it is unmindful. It is time, however, to consider the whole world of the
unconscious or “unwatched” mind. This may well frighten you because it is the
source of fear. The unwatched mind is responsible for the whole content of the
unconscious which lies above the miracle level. All psychoanalytic theorists have
made some contribution in this connection, but none of them has seen it in its
true entirety. They have all made one common error in that they attempted to
uncover unconscious content.You cannot understand unconscious activity in these
terms because “content” is applicable only to the more superficial unconscious
levels, to which the individual himself contributes. This is the level at which he
can readily introduce fear and usually does.
96
When man miscreates he is in pain. The cause and effect principle here is
temporarily a real expediter. Actually, “Cause” is a term properly belonging to
God, and “Effect,” which should also be capitalized, is His Son. This entails a set
of Cause and Effect relationships which are totally different from those which
man introduced into his own miscreations. The fundamental opponents in the
real basic conflict are creation and miscreation. All fear is implicit in the second,
just as all love is inherent in the first. Because of this difference, the basic conflict
is one between love and fear.
97
It has already been said that man believes he cannot control fear because
he himself created it. His belief in it seems to render it out of his control by
definition. Yet any attempt to resolve the basic conflict through the concept of
mastery of fear is meaningless. In fact it asserts the power of fear by the simple
assumption that it need be mastered.The essential resolution rests entirely on the
mastery of love. In the interim, the sense of conflict is inevitable since man has
placed himself in a strangely illogical position. He believes in the power of what
does not exist.
98
Two concepts which cannot coexist are “nothing” and “everything.” To
whatever extent one is believed in, the other has been denied. In the conflict fear
is really nothing, and love is everything. This is because whenever light enters
darkness, the darkness is abolished. What man believes is true for him. In this
sense the separation has occurred and to deny this is merely to misuse denial.
35
vi.
However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of defenses.The true
corrective procedure is to recognize error temporarily but only as an indication
that immediate correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which
the Atonement can be accepted without delay.
99
It should be emphasized, however, that ultimately there is no compromise
possible between everything and nothing. Time is essentially a device by which
all compromise in this respect can be given up. It seems to be abolished by
degrees because time itself involves a concept of intervals which do not really
exist. The faulty use of creation made this necessary as a corrective device. “And
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever
believeth on Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” needs only one slight
correction to be entirely meaningful in this context. It should read, “He gave it
to His only begotten Son.”
100
It should especially be noted that God has only one Son. If all the Souls
God created are His Sons, then every Soul must be an integral part of the whole
Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts
difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too much trouble in
understanding this.
101
The Sonship in its oneness does transcend the sum of its parts. However, this
is obscured as long as any of its parts are missing. That is why the conflict cannot
ultimately be resolved until all the parts of the Sonship have returned. Only then
can the meaning of wholeness, in the true sense, be fully understood.
102
Any part of the Sonship can believe in error or incompleteness if he so
elects. However, if he does so, he is believing in the existence of nothingness.
The correction of this error is the Atonement. We have already briefly spoken
about readiness, but there are some additional points which might be helpful
here. Readiness is nothing more than the prerequisite for accomplishment. The
two should not be confused. As soon as a state of readiness occurs, there is usually
some will to accomplish, but this is by no means necessarily undivided. The state
does not imply more than a potential for a shift of will.
103
Confidence cannot develop fully until mastery has been accomplished. We
have already attempted to correct the fundamental error that fear can be mastered
and have emphasized that only love can be mastered. You have attested only to
your readiness. Mastery of love involved a much more complete confidence than
either of you has attained. However, the readiness at least is an indication that
you believe this is possible. That is only the beginning of confidence. In case this
be misunderstood to imply that an enormous amount of time will be necessary
36
The Meaning of the Last Judgment
between readiness and mastery, let me remind you that time and space are under
my control.
104
One of the chief ways in which man can correct his magic-miracle confusion
is to remember that he did not create himself. He is apt to forget this when he
becomes egocentric, and this places him in a position where the belief in magic
in some form is virtually inevitable. His will to create was given him by his own
Creator, Who was expressing the same will in His creation. Since creative ability
rests in the mind, everything that man creates is necessarily a matter of will. It
also follows that whatever he creates is real in his own sight but not necessarily
in the sight of God. This basic distinction leads us directly into the real meaning
of the Last Judgment.
vi.
The Meaning
of the
Last Judgment
The Last Judgment is one of the greatest threat concepts in man’s
perception. This is only because he does not understand it. Judgment is not an
essential attribute of God. Man brought judgment into being only because of the
separation. After the separation, however, there was a place for judgment as one of
the many learning devices which had to be built into the overall plan. Just as the
separation occurred over many millions of years, the Last Judgment will extend
over a similarly long period and perhaps an even longer one. Its length depends,
however, on the effectiveness of the present speed-up.
106
We have frequently noted that the miracle is a device for shortening but not
abolishing time. If a sufficient number of people become truly miracle-minded
quickly, the shortening process can be almost immeasurable. It is essential, however,
that these individuals free themselves from fear sooner than would ordinarily be
the case because they must emerge from the conflict if they are to bring peace
to other minds.
107
The Last Judgment is generally thought of as a procedure undertaken by
God. Actually it will be undertaken by man with my help. It is a final healing
rather than a meting out of punishment, however much man may think that
punishment is deserved. Punishment is a concept in total opposition to rightmindedness. The aim of the Last Judgment is to restore right-mindedness to
man.
108
The Last Judgment might be called a process of right evaluation. It simply
means that finally all men will come to understand what is worthy and what
is not. After this, their ability to choose can be directed reasonably. Until this
105
37
distinction is made, however, the vacillations between free and imprisoned will
cannot but continue.The first step toward freedom must entail a sorting out of the
false from the true.This is a process of division only in the constructive sense and
reflects the true meaning of the Apocalypse. Man will ultimately look upon his
own creations and will to preserve only what is good, just as God Himself looked
upon what He had created and knew that it was good.
109
At this point, the will can begin to look with love on its own creations
because of their great worthiness.The mind will inevitably disown its miscreations
which, without the mind’s belief, will no longer exist.The term “Last Judgment”
is frightening not only because it has been falsely projected onto God, but also
because of the association of “last” with death. This is an outstanding example
of upside-down perception. Actually, if the meaning of the Last Judgment is
objectively examined, it is quite apparent that it is really the doorway to life.
110
No one who lives in fear is really alive. His own last judgment cannot be
directed toward himself because he is not his own creation. He can, however,
apply it meaningfully and at any time to everything he has created and retain
in his memory only what is good. This is what his right-mindedness cannot but
dictate.The purpose of time is solely to “give him time” to achieve this judgment.
It is his own perfect judgment of his own creations. When everything he retains
is loveable, there is no reason for fear to remain with him. This is his part in the
Atonement.
38
three
Retraining the Mind
i.
Introduction
T
his is a course in mind training. All learning involves attention and study
at some level. Some of the later parts of the course rest too heavily
on these earlier sections not to require their study. You will also need them
for preparation. Without this, you may become much too fearful when the
unexpected does occur to make constructive use of it. However, as you study
these earlier sections, you will begin to see some of their implications, which will
be amplified considerably later on.
3:2
The reason a solid foundation is necessary is because of the confusion between
fear and awe to which we have already referred and which so many people hold.
You will remember that we said that awe is inappropriate in connection with
the Sons of God because you should not experience awe in the presence of
your equals. However, it was also emphasized that awe is a proper reaction in
the Presence of your Creator. I have been careful to clarify my own role in the
Atonement, without either over- or understating it. I have also tried to do the
same in connection with yours. I have stressed that awe is not an appropriate
reaction to me because of my inherent equality.
3
Some of the later steps in this course, however, do involve a more direct
approach to God Himself. It would be most unwise to start on these steps without
careful preparation or awe will be confused with fear, and the experience will be
more traumatic than beatific. Healing is of God in the end. The means are being
carefully explained to you. Revelation may occasionally reveal the end to you, but
to reach it the means are needed.
39
iii. Atonement Without
Chapter 3: RETRAINING THE MIND
ii.
1.
Special Principles For Miracle Workers
The miracle abolishes the need for lower-order concerns. Since it is an
out-of-pattern time interval, the ordinary considerations of time and space
do not apply. When you perform a miracle, I will arrange both time and
space to adjust to it.
5
Clear distinction between what has been created and what is being created
is essential. All forms of correction (or healing) rest on this fundamental correction in level perception.
6
Another way of stating the above point is: Never confuse right- with
wrong-mindedness. Responding to any form of miscreation with anything
except a desire to heal (or a miracle) is an expression of this confusion.
7
The miracle is always a denial of this error and an affirmation of the truth.
Only right-mindedness can create in a way that has any real effect. Pragmatically, what has no real effect has no real existence. Its effect, then, is
emptiness. Being without substantial content, it lends itself to projection in
the improper sense.
8
The level-adjustment power of the miracle induces the right perception
for healing. Until this has occurred, healing cannot be understood. Forgiveness is an empty gesture unless it entails correction. Without this it is
essentially judgmental rather than healing.
9
Miraculous forgiveness is only correction. It has no element of judgment
at all. “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” in no way
evaluates what they do. It is strictly limited to an appeal to God to heal their
minds. There is no reference to the outcome of their mis-thought. That
does not matter.
10
The biblical injunction, “Be of one mind” is the statement for revelation-readiness. My own injunction, “Do this in remembrance of me” is the
request for cooperation from miracle workers. It should be noted that the
two statements are not in the same order of reality.The latter involves a time
awareness since to remember implies recalling the past in the present. Time
is under my direction, but Timelessness belongs to God alone. In time we
exist for and with each other. In Timelessness we coexist with God.
4
2.
3. 4.
5.
6.
7.
iii. Atonement Without
Sacrifice
There is another point which must be perfectly clear before any residual fear
which may still be associated with miracles becomes entirely groundless. The
crucifixion did not establish the Atonement. The resurrection did. This is a point
11
40
Sacrifice
which many very sincere Christians have misunderstood. No one who is free
of the scarcity-error could possibly make this mistake. If the crucifixion is seen
from an upside-down point of view, it does appear as if God permitted and even
encouraged one of his Sons to suffer because he was good. Many ministers preach
this every day.
12
This particularly unfortunate interpretation, which arose out of the combined
misprojections of a large number of my would-be followers, has led many people
to be bitterly afraid of God. This particularly anti-religious concept enters into
many religions, and this is neither by chance nor by coincidence. Yet the real
Christian would have to pause and ask, “How could this be?” Is it likely that God
Himself would be capable of the kind of thinking which His own words have
clearly stated is unworthy of man?
13
The best defense, as always, is not to attack another’s position but rather
to protect the truth. It is unwise to accept any concept if you have to turn a
whole frame of reference around in order to justify it. This procedure is painful
in its minor applications and genuinely tragic on a mass basis. Persecution is a
frequent result, undertaken to justify the terrible misperception that God Himself
persecuted His own Son on behalf of salvation. The very words are meaningless.
14
It has been particularly difficult to overcome this because, although the error
itself is no harder to overcome than any other error, men were unwilling to give
this one up because of its prominent “escape” value. In milder forms a parent
says, “This hurts me more than it hurts you,” and feels exonerated in beating a
child. Can you believe that the Father really thinks this way? It is so essential that
all such thinking be dispelled that we must be very sure that nothing of this kind
remains in your mind. I was not punished because you were bad. The wholly
benign lesson the Atonement teaches is lost if it is tainted with this kind of
distortion in any form.
15
“Vengeance is Mine sayeth the Lord,” is a strictly karmic viewpoint. It is a
real misperception of truth by which man assigns his own “evil” past to God.The
“evil conscience” from the past has nothing to do with God. He did not create
it, and He does not maintain it. God does not believe in karmic retribution. His
Divine Mind does not create that way. He does not hold the evil deeds of a man
even against himself. Is it likely, then, that He would hold against anyone the evil
that another did?
16
Be very sure that you recognize how utterly impossible this assumption really
is and how entirely it arises from misprojection. This kind of error is responsible
for a host of related errors including the belief that God rejected man and forced
41
iv. Miracles as Accurate
him out of the Garden of Eden. It is also responsible for the fact that you may
believe from time to time that I am misdirecting you. I have made every effort to
use words that are almost impossible to distort, but man is very inventive when it
comes to twisting symbols around.
17
God Himself is not symbolic; He is fact. The Atonement too is totally without
symbolism. It is perfectly clear because it exists in light. Only man’s attempts to
shroud it in darkness have made it inaccessible to the unwilling and ambiguous
to the partly willing. The Atonement itself radiates nothing but truth. It therefore
epitomizes harmlessness and sheds only blessing. It could not do this if it arose from
anything but perfect innocence. Innocence is wisdom because it is unaware of evil,
which does not exist. It is, however, perfectly aware of everything that is true.
18
The Resurrection demonstrated that nothing can destroy truth. Good can
withstand any form of evil because light abolishes all forms of darkness. The
Atonement is thus the perfect lesson. It is the final demonstration that all of the
other lessons which I taught are true. Man is released from all errors if he believes
in this. The deductive approach to teaching accepts the generalization which
is applicable to all single instances rather than building up the generalization
after analyzing numerous single instances separately. If you can accept the one
generalization now, there will be no need to learn from many smaller lessons.
19
Nothing can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into
the hands of his Father. By doing this, the mind awakens from its sleep and
remembers its Creator. All sense of separation disappears, and level confusion
vanishes. The Son of God is part of the Holy Trinity, but the Trinity itself is One.
There is no confusion within its levels because they are of One Mind and One
Will. This single purpose creates perfect integration and establishes the peace of
God.Yet this vision can be perceived only by the truly innocent.
20
Because their hearts are pure, the innocent defend true perception instead
of defending themselves against it. Understanding the lesson of the Atonement,
they are without the will to attack, and therefore they see truly. This is what the
Bible means when it says, “When He shall appear (or be perceived) we shall be
like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
21
Sacrifice is a notion totally unknown to God. It arises solely from fear. This is
particularly unfortunate because frightened people are apt to be vicious. Sacrificing
another in any way is a clear cut violation of God’s own injunction that man should
be merciful even as his Father in Heaven. It has been hard for many Christians to
realize that this commandment (or assignment) also applies to themselves. Good
teachers never terrorize their students. To terrorize is to attack, and this results in
42
Perception
rejection of what the teacher offers. The result is learning failure.
22
I have been correctly referred to as “the Lamb of God who taketh away
the sins of the world.” Those who represent the lamb as blood-stained, an alltoo-widespread error, do not understand the meaning of the symbol. Correctly
understood, it is a very simple parable which merely speaks of my innocence.
The lion and the lamb lying down together refers to the fact that strength and
innocence are not in conflict but naturally live in peace. “Blessed are the pure in
heart for they shall see God” is another way of saying the same thing.
23
There has been some human controversy about the nature of seeing in
relation to the integrative powers of the brain. Correctly understood, the issue
revolves around the question of whether the body or the mind can see (or
understand). This is not really open to question at all. The body is not capable
of understanding, and only the mind can perceive anything. A pure mind knows
the truth, and this is its strength. It cannot attack the body because it recognizes
exactly what the body is. This is what “a sane mind in a sane body” really means.
It does not confuse destruction with innocence because it associates innocence
with strength, not with weakness.
24
Innocence is incapable of sacrificing anything because the innocent mind has
everything and strives only to protect its wholeness.This is why it cannot misproject.
It can only honor man because honor is the natural greeting of the truly loved
to others who are like them. The lamb taketh away the sins of the world only in
the sense that the state of innocence, or grace, is one in which the meaning of the
Atonement is perfectly apparent. The innocence of God is the true state of mind
of His Son. In this state, man’s mind does see God in the sense that he sees Him as
He is and realizes that the Atonement, not sacrifice, is the only appropriate gift to
His own altar, where nothing except true perfection belongs. The understanding
of the innocent is truth. That is why their altars are truly radiant.
iv.
Miracles
as
Accurate Perception
We have repeatedly stated that the basic concepts referred to in this course
are not matters of degree. Certain fundamental concepts cannot be meaningfully
understood in terms of coexisting polarities. It is impossible to conceive of light
and darkness, or everything and nothing, as joint possibilities. They are all true
or all false. It is essential that you realize that behavior is erratic until a firm
commitment to one or the other is made.
26
A firm commitment to darkness or nothingness is impossible. No one has ever
lived who has not experienced some light and some thing. This makes everyone
25
43
really unable to deny truth totally, even if he generally deceives himself in this
connection. That is why those who live largely in darkness and emptiness never
find any lasting solace. Innocence is not a partial attribute. It is not a real defense
until it is total.When it is partial, it is characterized by the same erratic nature that
holds for other two-edged defenses.
27
The partly innocent are apt to be quite stupid at times. It is not until their
innocence becomes a genuine viewpoint which is universal in its application
that it becomes wisdom. Innocent (or true) perception means that you never
misperceive and always see truly. More simply, it means that you never see what
does not really exist.When you lack confidence in what someone will do, you are
attesting to your belief that he is not in his right mind. This is hardly a miraclebased frame of reference. It also has the disastrous effect of denying the creative
power of the miracle.
28
The miracle perceives everything as it is. If nothing but the truth exists (and
this is really a redundant statement because what is not true cannot exist) rightminded seeing cannot see anything but perfection. We have said many times that
only what God creates, or what man creates with the same will, has any real
existence. This, then, is all the innocent can see. They do not suffer from the
distortions of the separated ones. The way to correct all such distortions is to
withdraw your faith from them and invest it only in what is true.
29
You cannot validate the invalid. I would suggest that you voluntarily give up
all such attempts because they can only be frantic. If you are willing to validate
what is true in everything you perceive, you will make it true for you. Truth
overcomes all error. This means that if you perceive truly, you are canceling out
misperceptions in yourself and in others simultaneously. Because you see them
as they are, you offer them your own validation of their truth. This is the healing
which the miracle actively fosters.
v.
Perception Versus Knowledge
We have been emphasizing perception and have said very little about
cognition as yet because you are confused about the difference between them.
The reason we have dealt so little with cognition is because you must get your
perceptions straightened out before you can know anything. To know is to be
certain. Uncertainty merely means that you do not know. Knowledge is power
because it is certain, and certainty is strength. Perception is merely temporary. It
is an attribute of the space-time belief and is therefore subject to fear or love.
Misperceptions produce fear, and true perceptions produce love. Neither produces
30
44
v. Perception Versus
Knowledge
certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is not knowledge.
31
True perception is the basis for knowledge, but knowing is the affirmation of
truth. All your difficulties ultimately stem from the fact that you do not recognize
or know yourselves, each other, or God. To recognize means to “know again,”
implying that you knew before. You can see in many ways because perception
involves different interpretations, and this means that it is not whole.The miracle
is a way of perceiving, not of knowing. It is the right answer to a question, and
you do not ask questions at all when you know.
32
Questioning illusions is the first step in undoing them. The miracle, or the
“right answer,” corrects them. Since perceptions change, their dependence on
time is obvious. They are subject to transitory states, and this necessarily implies
variability. How you perceive at any given time determines what you do, and action
must occur in time. Knowledge is timeless because certainty is not questionable.
You know when you have ceased to ask questions.
33
The questioning mind perceives itself in time and therefore looks for future
answers. The unquestioning mind is closed because it believes the future and
present will be the same. This establishes an unchanged state or stasis. It is usually
an attempt to counteract an underlying fear that the future will be worse than the
present, and this fear inhibits the tendency to question at all.
34
Visions are the natural perception of the Spiritual eye, but they are still
corrections.The Spiritual eye is symbolic and therefore not a device for knowing.
It is, however, a means of right perception, which brings it into the proper domain
of the miracle. Properly speaking, “a vision of God” is a miracle rather than a
revelation.The fact that perception is involved at all removes the experience from
the realm of knowledge. That is why visions do not last.
35
The Bible instructs you to “know yourself ” or be certain. Certainty is always of
God. When you love someone, you have perceived him as he is, and this makes
it possible for you to know him. However, it is not until you recognize him that
you can know him. While you ask questions about God, you are clearly implying
that you do not know Him. Certainty does not require action.When you say that
you are acting on the basis of knowledge, you are really confusing perception and
cognition. Knowledge brings the mental strength for creative thinking but not for
right doing. Perception, miracles, and doing are closely related. Knowledge is the
result of revelation and induces only thought. Perception involves the body, even
in its most spiritualized form. Knowledge comes from the altar within and is
timeless because it is certain. To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it.
36
If you attack error in one another, you will hurt yourself. You cannot
45
vi. Conflict and the
recognize each other when you attack. Attack is always made on a stranger. You
are making him a stranger by misperceiving him so that you cannot know him. It
is because you have made him a stranger that you are afraid of him. Perceive him
correctly so that you can know him. Right perception is necessary before God
can communicate directly to His own altars which He has established in His
Sons. There He can communicate His certainty, and His knowledge will bring
peace without question.
37
God is not a stranger to His Sons, and His Sons are not strangers to each other.
Knowledge preceded both perception and time and will ultimately replace them.
That is the real meaning of the Biblical description of God as “Alpha and Omega,
the Beginning and the End.” It also explains the quotation, “Before Abraham was
I am.” Perception can and must be stabilized, but knowledge is stable.” Fear God
and keep his commandments” should read “Know God and accept His certainty.”
There are no strangers in His creation. To create as He created, you can create
only what you know and accept as yours. God knows His Children with perfect
certainty. He created them by knowing them. He recognized them perfectly.
When they do not recognize each other, they do not recognize Him.
vi.
Conflict
and the
Ego
The abilities man now possesses are only shadows of his real strengths. All of
his functions are equivocal and open to question or doubt. This is because he is
not certain how he will use them. He is therefore incapable of knowledge, being
uncertain. He is also incapable of knowledge because he can perceive lovelessly.
He cannot create surely because his perception deceives. Perception did not exist
until the separation had introduced degrees, aspects, and intervals. The Soul has
no levels, and all conflict arises from the concept of levels. Only the levels of
the Trinity are capable of unity. The levels which man created by the separation
cannot but conflict. This is because they are essentially meaningless to each other.
39
Freud realized this perfectly and that is why he conceived the different levels
in his view of the psyche as forever irreconcilable. They were conflict-prone by
definition because they wanted different things and obeyed different principles.
In our picture of the psyche, there is an unconscious level which properly consists
only of the miracle ability and which should be under my direction. There is
also a conscious level, which perceives or is aware of impulses from both the
unconscious and the superconscious. Consciousness is thus the level of perception
but not of knowledge. Again, to perceive is not to know.
40
Consciousness was the first split that man introduced into himself. He became
38
46
Ego
a perceiver rather than a creator in the true sense. Consciousness is correctly
identified as the domain of the ego. The ego is a man-made attempt to perceive
himself as he wished to be rather than as he is. This is an example of the createdcreator confusion we have spoken of before.Yet man can only know himself as he
is because that is all he can be sure of. Everything else is open to question.
41
The ego is the questioning compartment in the post-separation psyche
which man created for himself. It is capable of asking valid questions but not of
perceiving valid answers because these are cognitive and cannot be perceived.The
endless speculation about the meaning of mind has led to considerable confusion
because the mind is confused. Only One-Mindedness is without confusion. A
separated or divided mind must be confused; it is uncertain by definition. It has to
be in conflict because it is out of accord with itself.
42
Intrapersonal conflict arises from the same basis as interpersonal conflict.
One part of the psyche perceives another part as on a different level and does not
understand it. This makes the parts strangers to each other, without recognition.
This is the essence of the fear-prone condition in which attack is always possible.
Man has every reason to feel afraid as he perceives himself.This is why he cannot
escape from fear until he knows that he did not and could not create himself. He
can never make his misperceptions valid. His creation is beyond his own error, and
that is why he must eventually choose to heal the separation.
43
Right-mindedness is not to be confused with the knowing mind because it is
applicable only to right perception.You can be right-minded or wrong-minded,
and even this is subject to degrees, a fact which clearly demonstrates a lack of
association with knowledge.The term “right-mindedness” is properly used as the
correction for “wrong-mindedness,” and applies to the state of mind which induces
accurate perception. It is miraculous because it heals misperception, and this is
indeed a miracle in view of how man perceives himself.
44
Perception always involves some misuse of will because it involves the
mind in areas of uncertainty. The mind is very active because it has will-power.
When it willed the separation, it willed to perceive. Until then, it willed only to
know. Afterwards it willed ambiguously, and the only way out of ambiguity is
clear perception. The mind returns to its proper function only when it wills to
know. This places it in the Soul’s service, where perception is meaningless. The
superconscious is the level of the mind which wills this.
45
The mind chose to divide itself when it willed to create both its own levels
and the ability to perceive, but it could not entirely separate itself from the Soul
because it is from the Soul that it derives its whole power to create. Even in
47
vii. The
miscreation will is affirming its Source or it would merely cease to be. This
is impossible because it is part of the Soul which God created and which is
therefore eternal.
46
The ability to perceive made the body possible because you must perceive
something and with something. This is why perception involves an exchange
or translation, which knowledge does not need. The interpretive function of
perception, actually a distorted form of creation, then permitted man to interpret
the body as himself, which, though depressing, was an attempt to escape from
the conflict he had induced. The superconscious, which knows, could not be
reconciled with this loss of power because it is incapable of darkness. This is why
it became almost inaccessible to the mind and entirely inaccessible to the body.
47
Thereafter, the superconscious was perceived as a threat because light does
abolish darkness merely by establishing the fact that it is not there. The truth will
always overcome error in this sense. This is not an active process of destruction
at all. We have already emphasized that knowledge does not do anything. It can
be perceived as an attacker, but it cannot attack. What man perceives as its attack is
merely his own vague recognition of the fact that it can always be remembered,
never having been destroyed.
48
God and the Souls He created remain in surety, and therefore know that no
miscreation exists. Truth cannot deal with unwilling error because it does not
will to be blocked out. I was a man who remembered the Soul and its knowledge,
and as a man I did not attempt to counteract error with knowledge so much as to
correct error from the bottom up. I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the
body and the power of the mind. By uniting my will with that of my Creator, I
naturally remembered the Soul and its own real purpose.
49
I cannot unite your will with God’s for you, but I can erase all misperceptions
from your mind if you will bring it under my guidance. Only your misperceptions
stand in your own way. Without them your choice is certain. Sane perception
induces sane choosing. The Atonement was an act based on true perception. I
cannot choose for you, but I can help you make your own right choice. “Many
are called, but few are chosen” should read, “All are called, but few choose to
listen. Therefore, they do not choose right.”
50
The “chosen ones” are merely those who choose right sooner. This is the real
meaning of the celestial speed-up. Strong wills can do this now, and you will find
rest for your Souls. God knows you only in peace, and this is your reality.
48
vii. The
Loss
of
Loss of Certainty
Certainty
We said before that the abilities which man possesses are only shadows of his
real strengths and that the intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently
judgmental, was introduced only after the separation. No one has been sure of
anything since. You will also remember, however, that I made it clear that the
resurrection was the means for the return to knowledge, which was accomplished
by the union of my will with the Father’s. We can now make a distinction which
will greatly facilitate clarity in our subsequent statements.
52
Since the separation, the words “create” and “make” have been greatly
confused. When you make something, you make it out of a sense of lack or
need. Anything that is made is made for a specific purpose and has no true
generalizability. When you make something to fill a perceived lack, which is
obviously why you would want to make anything, you are tacitly implying that
you believe in separation. Knowing, as we have frequently observed, does not
lead to doing at all.
53
The confusion between your own creation and what you create is so profound
that it has become literally impossible for you to know anything. Knowledge is
always stable, and it is quite evident that human beings are not. Nevertheless,
they are perfectly stable as God created them. In this sense, when their behavior
is unstable they are disagreeing with God’s idea of the creation. Man can do this
if he chooses, but he would hardly want to do it if he were in his right mind.
The problem that bothers you most is the fundamental question which man
continually asks of himself, but which cannot properly be directed to himself at
all. He keeps asking himself what he is. This implies that the answer is not only
one which he knows but is also one which is up to him to supply.
54
Man cannot perceive himself correctly. He has no image.The word “image” is
always perception-related and not a product of learning. Images are symbolic and
stand for something else.The current emphasis on “changing your image” merely
recognizes the power of perception, but it also implies that there is nothing to
know. Knowing is not open to interpretation. It is possible to “interpret” meaning,
but this is always open to error because it refers to the perception of meaning. Such
wholly needless complexities are the result of man’s attempt to regard himself as
both separated and unseparated at the same time. It is impossible to undertake a
confusion as fundamental as this without engaging in further confusion.
55
Methodologically, man’s mind has been very creative but, as always occurs
when method and content are separated, it has not been utilized for anything
but an attempt to escape a fundamental and entirely inescapable impasse. This
51
49
viii. Judgment and the Authority
kind of thinking cannot result in a creative outcome, although it has resulted in
considerable ingenuity. It is noteworthy, however, that this ingenuity has almost
totally divorced him from knowledge. Knowledge does not require ingenuity.
When we say “the truth shall set you free,” we mean that all this kind of thinking
is a waste of time, but that you are free of the need to engage in it if you are
willing to let it go.
56
Prayer is a way of asking for something. Prayer is the medium of miracles,
but the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness because those who have been
forgiven have everything. Once forgiveness has been accepted, prayer in the usual
sense becomes utterly meaningless. Essentially, a prayer for forgiveness is nothing
more than a request that we may be able to recognize something we already have.
In electing to perceive instead of to know, man placed himself in a position
where he could resemble his Father only by miraculously perceiving. He has lost
the knowledge that he himself is a miracle. Miraculous creation was his Source
and also his real function.
57
“God created man in His own image and likeness” is correct in meaning, but
the words are open to considerable misinterpretation. This is avoided, however,
if “image” is understood to mean “thought” and “likeness” is taken as “of a like
quality.” God did create the Soul in His own Thought and of a quality like to
His own. There is nothing else. Perception, on the other hand, is impossible
without a belief in “more” and “less.” Perception at every level involves selectivity
and is incapable of organization without it. In all types of perception, there is a
continual process of accepting and rejecting or organizing and reorganizing, of
shifting and changing focus. Evaluation is an essential part of perception because
judgments must be made for selection.
58
What happens to perceptions if there are no judgments and there is nothing
but perfect equality? Perception becomes impossible. Truth can only be known.
All of it is equally true and knowing any part of it is to know all of it. Only
perception involves partial awareness. Knowledge transcends all the laws which
govern perception because partial knowledge is impossible. It is all one and has
no separate parts.You who are really one with it need but know yourself, and your
knowledge is complete. To know God’s miracle is to know Him.
59
Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation. Correct perception
of each other is necessary because minds have willed to see themselves as separate.
Each Soul knows God completely. That is the miraculous power of the Soul.
The fact that each one has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to
human thinking, in which if anyone has everything, there is nothing left. God’s
50
Problem
miracles are as total as His Thoughts because they are His Thoughts.
60
As long as perception lasts prayer has a place. Since perception rests on
lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given
themselves over to truth. Perception is a separated state, and a perceiver does need
healing. Communion, not prayer, is the natural state of those who know. God and
His miracles are inseparable. How beautiful indeed are the Thoughts of God who
live in His light! Your worth is beyond perception because it is beyond doubt. Do
not perceive yourself in different lights. Know yourself in the One Light where
the miracle that is you is perfectly clear.
viii. Judgment and the
Authority Problem
We have already discussed the Last Judgment in some though insufficient detail.
After the Last Judgment there will be no more. This is symbolic only in the sense
that everyone is much better off without judgment. When the Bible says, “Judge
not that ye be not judged” it merely means that if you judge the reality of others
at all, you will be unable to avoid judging your own. The choice to judge rather
than to know was the cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on which
perception, but not cognition, rests. We have discussed this before in terms of the
selectivity of perception, pointing out that evaluation is its obvious prerequisite.
62
Judgment always involves rejection. It is not an ability which emphasizes only
the positive aspects of what is judged, whether it be in or out of the self. However,
what has been perceived and rejected –or judged and found wanting–remains in
the unconscious because it has been perceived. One of the illusions from which
man suffers is the belief that what he judged against has no effect. This cannot
be true unless he also believes that what he judged against does not exist. He
evidently does not believe this, or he would not have judged against it. It does not
matter in the end whether you judge right or wrong. Either way, you are placing
your belief in the unreal.This cannot be avoided in any type of judgment because
it implies the belief that reality is yours to choose from.
63
You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes
from meeting yourselves and your brothers totally without judgment. When you
recognize what you and your brothers are, you will realize that judging them in
any way is without meaning. In fact, their meaning is lost to you precisely because
you are judging them. All uncertainty comes from a totally fallacious belief that
you are under the coercion of judgment.You do not need judgment to organize
your life, and you certainly do not need it to organize yourselves. In the presence
of knowledge, all judgment is automatically suspended, and this is the process
61
51
ix. Creating Versus the
which enables recognition to replace perception.
64
Man is very fearful of everything he has perceived but has refused to accept.
He believes that, because he has refused to accept it, he has lost control over it.
This is why he sees it in nightmares or in pleasant disguises in what seem to be
his happier dreams. Nothing that you have refused to accept can be brought into
awareness. It does not follow that it is dangerous, but it does follow that you have
made it dangerous.
65
When you feel tired, it is merely because you have judged yourself as capable
of being tired. When you laugh at someone, it is because you have judged him as
debased. When you laugh at yourself, you are singularly likely to laugh at others
if only because you cannot tolerate the idea of being more debased than they are.
All of this does make you feel tired because it is essentially disheartening.You are
not really capable of being tired, but you are very capable of wearying yourselves.
The strain of constant judgment is virtually intolerable. It is a curious thing that
any ability which is so debilitating should be so deeply cherished.
66
Yet, if you wish to be the author of reality, which is totally impossible
anyway, you will insist on holding onto judgment. You will also use the term
with considerable fear, believing that judgment will someday be used against
you. To whatever extent it is used against you, it is due only to your belief in its
efficacy as a weapon of defense for your own authority. The issue of authority is
really a question of authorship. When an individual has an “authority problem,”
it is always because he believes he is the author of himself, projects his delusion
onto others, and then perceives the situation as one in which people are literally
fighting him for his authorship. This is the fundamental error of all those who
believe they have usurped the power of God.
67
The belief is very frightening to them but hardly troubles God. He is, however,
eager to undo it, not to punish His Children, but only because He knows that it
makes them unhappy. Souls were given their true Authorship, but men preferred
to be anonymous when they chose to separate themselves from their Author.The
word “authority” has been one of their most fearful symbols ever since. Authority
has been used for great cruelty because, being uncertain of their true Authorship,
men believe that their creation was anonymous. This has left them in a position
where it sounds meaningful to consider the possibility that they must have created
themselves.
68
The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of men
that some have even doubted whether they really exist at all. Despite the apparent
contradiction in this position, it is in one sense more tenable than the view
52
Self-Image
that they created themselves. At least it acknowledges the fact that some true
authorship is necessary for existence.
69
Only those who give over all desire to reject can know that their own
rejection is impossible.You have not usurped the power of God, but you have lost
it. Fortunately, when you lose something, it does not mean that the “something”
has gone. It merely means that you do not know where it is. Existence does not
depend on your ability to identify it nor even to place it. It is perfectly possible
to look on reality without judgment and merely know that it is there.
70
Peace is a natural heritage of the Soul. Everyone is free to refuse to accept his
inheritance, but he is not free to establish what his inheritance is. The problem
which everyone must decide is the fundamental question of authorship. All fear
comes ultimately and sometimes by way of very devious routes from the denial
of Authorship. The offense is never to God, but only to those who deny Him.
To deny His Authorship is to deny themselves the reason for their own peace, so
that they see themselves only in pieces. This strange perception is the authority
problem.
71
There is no man who does not feel that he is imprisoned in some way. If this
is the result of his own free will, he must regard his will as if it were not free, or
the obviously circular reasoning involved in his position would be quite apparent.
Free will must lead to freedom. Judgment always imprisons because it separates
segments of reality according to the highly unstable scales of desire. Wishes are
not facts by definition.To wish is to imply that willing is not sufficient.Yet no one
believes that what is wished is as real as what is willed. Instead of, “Seek ye first
the Kingdom of Heaven” say, “Will ye first the Kingdom of Heaven,” and you
have said, “I know what I am, and I will to accept my own inheritance.”
ix.
Creating Versus
the
Self-Image
Every system of thought must have a starting point. It begins with either
a making or a creating, a difference which we have discussed already. Their
resemblance lies in their power as foundations. Their difference lies in what rests
upon them. Both are cornerstones for systems of belief by which men live. It is a
mistake to believe that a thought system which is based on lies is weak. Nothing
made by a Child of God is without power. It is essential to realize this because
otherwise you will not understand why you have so much trouble with this
course and will be unable to escape from the prisons which you have made for
yourselves.
72
53
You cannot resolve the authority problem by depreciating the power of your
minds.To do so is to deceive yourself, and this will hurt you because you know the
strength of the mind.You also know that you cannot weaken it, any more than you
can weaken God. The “devil” is a frightening concept because he is thought of
as extremely powerful and extremely active. He is perceived as a force in combat
with God, battling Him for possession of the Souls He created. He deceives by
lies and builds kingdoms of his own in which everything is in direct opposition
to God.Yet he attracts men rather than repels them, and they are seen as willing to
“sell” him their Souls in return for gifts they recognize are of no real worth.
74
This makes absolutely no sense. The whole picture is one in which man acts
in a way he himself realizes is self-destructive but which he does not choose to
correct and therefore perceives the cause as beyond his control.We have discussed
the fall, or separation, before, but its meaning must be clearly understood without
symbols. The separation is not symbolic. It is an order of reality or a system of
thought that is real enough in time, though not in eternity. All beliefs are real to
the believer.
75
The fruit of only one tree was “forbidden” to man in his symbolic garden. But
God could not have forbidden it or it could not have been eaten. If God knows His
Children, and I assure you that He does, would He have put them in a position
where their own destruction was possible? The “tree” which was forbidden was
named the “tree of knowledge.” Yet God created knowledge and gave it freely
to His creations. The symbolism here has been given many interpretations, but
you may be sure that any interpretation which sees either God or His creations as
capable of destroying their own purpose is in error.
76
Eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge is a symbolic expression for
incorporating into the self the ability for self-creating. This is the only sense in
which God and His Souls are not co-creators.The belief that they are is implicit in
the “self concept,” a concept now made acceptable by its weakness and explained
by a tendency of the self to create an image of itself. Its fear aspect is often ascribed
to fear of retaliation by a “father figure,” a particularly curious idea in view of the
fact that no one uses the term to refer to the physical father. It refers to an image
of a father in relation to an image of the self.
77
Images are perceived, not known. Knowledge cannot deceive, but perception
can. Man can perceive himself as self-creating, but he cannot do more than believe
it. He cannot make it true. And, as we said before, when you finally perceive
correctly, you can only be glad that you cannot. But until then, the belief that
you can is the central foundation stone in your thought system, and all your
73
54
¶
ix. Creating Versus the
Self-Image
defenses are used to attack ideas which might bring it to light. You still believe
you are images of your own creation.Your minds are split with your Souls on this
point, and there is no resolution while you believe the one thing that is literally
inconceivable. That is why you cannot create and are filled with fear about what
you make.
78
The mind can make the belief in separation very real and very fearful, and this
belief is the “devil.” It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to
God because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate the power
of this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made. But know that
this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth because its foundation is a lie.
79
Your creation by God is the only foundation which cannot be shaken because
the light is in it.Your starting point is truth, and you must return to this beginning.
Much has been perceived since then, but nothing else has happened. That is why
your Souls are still in peace, even though your minds are in conflict. You have
not yet gone back far enough, and that is why you become so fearful. As you
approach the beginning, you feel the fear of the destruction of your thought
system upon you, as if it were the fear of death. There is no death, but there is a
belief in death.
80
The Bible says that the branch that bears no fruit will be cut off and will
wither away. Be glad! The light will shine from the true Foundation of Life, and
your own thought system will stand corrected. It cannot stand otherwise.You who
fear salvation are willing death. Life and death, light and darkness, knowledge and
perception are irreconcilable. To believe that they can be reconciled is to believe
that God and man can not. Only the oneness of knowledge is conflictless. Your
kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from beyond this world.
Only in this world is the idea of an authority problem meaningful. The world is
not left by death but by truth, and truth can be known by all those for whom the
Kingdom was created and for whom it waits.
55
ii. Right Teaching and
ii.
four
The Root of All Evil
i.
T
Introduction
he Bible says that you should go with a brother twice as far as he asks. It
certainly does not suggest that you set him back on his journey. Devotion
to a brother cannot set you back either. It can lead only to mutual progress. The
result of genuine devotion is inspiration, a word which properly understood is
the opposite of fatigue. To be fatigued is to be dis-spirited, but to be inspired is
to be in the spirit. To be egocentric is to be dispirited, but to be self-centered in
the right sense is to be inspired, or in the Soul.The truly inspired are enlightened
and cannot abide in darkness.
4:2
You can speak from the Soul or from the ego, precisely as you choose. If you
speak from the Soul, you have chosen “to be still and know that I am God.”These
words are inspired because they come from knowledge. If you speak from the
ego, you are disclaiming knowledge instead of affirming it and are thus dispiriting
yourself. Do not embark on foolish journeys because they are indeed in vain.The
ego may desire them, but the Soul cannot embark on them because it is forever
unwilling to depart from its Foundation.
3
The journey to the cross should be the last foolish journey for every mind.
Do not dwell upon it, but dismiss it as accomplished. If you can accept it as
your own last foolish journey, you are also free to join my resurrection. Human
living has indeed been needlessly wasted in a repetition compulsion. It reenacts
the separation, the loss of power, the foolish journey of the ego in an attempt at
reparation, and finally the crucifixion of the body or death.
4
Repetition compulsions can be endless unless they are given up by an act of
will. Do not make the pathetic human error of “clinging to the old rugged cross.”
The only message of the crucifixion was that we can overcome the cross. Unless
you do so, you are free to crucify yourself as often as you choose. But this is not
the Gospel I intended to offer you. We have another journey to undertake, and if
you will read these lessons carefully, they will help to prepare you to undertake it.
56
Right Teaching
and
Right Learning
Right Learning
We have spoken of many different human symptoms, and at this level there
is almost endless variation. There is, however, only one cause of all them. The
authority problem is “the root of all evil.” Money is but one of its many reflections
and is a reasonably representative example of the kind of thinking which stems
from it.The idea of buying and selling implies precisely the kind of exchange that
the Soul cannot understand at all because its supply is always abundant and all its
demands are fully met.
6
Every symptom which the ego has made involves a contradiction in terms.
This is because the mind is split between the ego and the Soul, so that whatever
the ego makes is incomplete and contradictory. This untenable position is the
result of the authority problem which, because it accepts the one inconceivable
thought as its premise, can only produce ideas which are inconceivable.The term
“profess” is used quite frequently in the Bible. To profess is to identify with an
idea and offer the idea to others to be their own. The idea does not lessen; it
becomes stronger.
7
A good teacher clarifies his own ideas and strengthens them by teaching them.
Teacher and pupil are alike in the learning process. They are in the same order
of learning, and unless they share their lessons, they will lack conviction. A good
teacher must believe in the ideas which he professes, but he must meet another
condition; he must also believe in the students to whom he offers his ideas.
Many stand guard over their ideas because they want to protect their thought
systems as they are, and learning means change. Change is always fearful to the
separated ones because they cannot conceive of it as a change towards healing the
separation.They always perceive it as a change towards further separation because
the separation was their first experience of change.
8
You believe that if you allow no change to enter into your ego, your Soul
will find peace. This profound confusion is possible only if one maintains that
the same thought system can stand on two foundations. Nothing can reach the
Soul from the ego, and nothing from the Soul can strengthen the ego or reduce
the conflict within it. The ego is a contradiction. Man’s self and God’s Self are
in opposition. They are opposed in creation, in will, and in outcome. They are
fundamentally irreconcilable because the Soul cannot perceive and the ego cannot
know.They are therefore not in communication and can never be in communication.
Nevertheless, the ego can learn because its maker can be misguided but cannot
make the totally lifeless out of the life-given. The Soul need not be taught, but
the ego must.
5
57
Chapter 4: THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL
The ultimate reason why learning is perceived as frightening is because
learning does lead to the relinquishment (not destruction) of the ego to the light
of the Soul. This is the change the ego must fear because it does not share my
charity. My lesson was like yours, and because I learned it I can teach it. I never
attack your egos, but I do try to teach you how their thought system arose.When
I remind you of your true creation, your egos cannot but respond with fear.
10
Teaching and learning are your greatest strengths now because you must
change your mind and help others change theirs. It is pointless to refuse to
tolerate change because you believe you can demonstrate that by doing so the
separation has not occurred. The dreamer who doubts the reality of his dream
while he is still dreaming is not really healing the level-split.You have dreamed of
a separated ego, and you have believed in a world which rests upon it.This is very
real to you.You cannot undo this by doing nothing and not changing.
11
If you are willing to renounce the role of guardian of your thought system
and open it to me, I will correct it very gently and lead you home. Every good
teacher hopes to give his students so much of his own thinking that they will
one day no longer need him. This is the one real goal of the parent, teacher, and
therapist. This goal will not be achieved by those who believe that they will lose
their child or pupil or patient if they succeed. It is impossible to convince the ego
of this because it goes against all of its own laws. But remember that laws are set
up to protect the continuity of the system in which the law-maker believes.
12
It is natural enough for the ego to try to protect itself once you have made it,
but it is not natural for you to want to obey its laws unless you believe in them.The
ego cannot make this choice because of the nature of its origin. You can because
of the nature of yours. Egos can clash in any situation, but Souls cannot clash at
all. If you perceive a teacher as merely a “larger ego,” you will be afraid because to
enlarge an ego is to increase separation anxiety. I will teach with you and live with
you if you will think with me, but my goal will always be to absolve you finally
from the need for a teacher.
13
This is the opposite of the ego-oriented teacher’s goal. He is concerned with
the effect of his ego on other egos and therefore interprets their interaction as a
means of ego preservation. I would not be able to devote myself to teaching if I
believed this, and you will not be a devoted teacher as long as you maintain it. I
am constantly being perceived as a teacher either to be exalted or rejected, but I
do not accept either perception for myself.
14
Your worth is not established by your teaching or your learning.Your worth
was established by God. As long as you dispute this, everything you do will be
9
58
ii. Right Teaching and
Right Learning
fearful, particularly any situation which lends itself to the “superiority-inferiority”
fallacy. Teachers must be patient and repeat their lessons until they are learned. I
am willing to do this because I have no right to set your learning limits for you.
Once again—nothing you do or think or wish or make is necessary to establish
your worth. This point is not debatable except in delusions. Your ego is never at
stake because God did not create it. Your Soul is never at stake because He did.
Any confusion on this point is a delusion and no form of devotion is possible as
long as this delusion lasts.
15
The ego tries to exploit all situations into forms of praise for itself in order to
overcome its doubts. It will be doubtful forever, or rather as long as you believe
in it. You who made it cannot trust it because you know it is not real. The only
sane solution is not to try to change reality, which is indeed a fearful attempt, but
to see it as it is. You are part of reality, which stands unchanged beyond the reach
of your ego but within easy reach of your Soul. When you are afraid, be still and
know that God is real and you are His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased.
Do not let your ego dispute this because the ego cannot know what is as far
beyond its reach as you are.
16
God is not the author of fear. You are. You have chosen, therefore, to create
unlike Him, and you have made fear for yourselves.You are not at peace because
you are not fulfilling your function. God gave you a very lofty responsibility which
you are not meeting. You know this, and you are afraid. In fact, your egos have
chosen to be afraid instead of meeting it. When you awaken you will not be able
to understand this because it is literally incredible. Do not believe the incredible now.
Any attempt to increase its believability is merely to postpone the inevitable.
17
The word “inevitable” is fearful to the ego but joyous to the Soul. God is
inevitable, and you cannot avoid Him any more that He can avoid you. The ego is
afraid of the Soul’s joy because, once you have experienced it, you will withdraw
all protection from the ego and become totally without the investment in fear.
Your investment is great now because fear is a witness to the separation, and your
ego rejoices when you witness to it. Leave it behind! Do not listen to it, and do
not preserve it. Listen only to God, Who is as incapable of deception as are the
Souls He created.
18
Release yourselves and release others. Do not present a false and unworthy
picture of yourself to others, and do not accept such a picture of them yourselves.
The ego has built a shabby and unsheltering home for you because it cannot
build otherwise. Do not try to make this impoverished house stand. Its weakness
is your strength. Only God could make a home that is worthy of His creations,
59
iii. The
who have chosen to leave it empty by their own dispossession.Yet His home will
stand forever and is ready for you when you choose to enter it. Of this you can
be wholly certain. God is as incapable of creating the perishable as the ego is of
making the eternal.
19
Of your egos you can do nothing to save yourselves or others, but of your
Souls you can do everything for the salvation of both. Humility is a lesson for
the ego, not for the Soul. The Soul is beyond humility because it recognizes
its radiance and gladly sheds its light everywhere. The meek shall inherit the
earth because their egos are humble, and this gives them better perception. The
Kingdom of Heaven is the right of the Soul, whose beauty and dignity are far
beyond doubt, beyond perception, and stand forever as the mark of the love of
God for His creations, who are wholly worthy of Him and only of Him. Nothing
else is sufficiently worthy to be a gift for a creation of God Himself.
20
I will substitute for your ego if you wish but never for your Soul. A father can
safely leave a child with an elder brother who has shown himself responsible, but
this involves no confusion about the child’s origin. The brother can protect the
child’s body and his ego, which are very closely related, but he does not confuse
himself with the father because he does this, although the child may. I can be
entrusted with your body and your ego simply because this enables you not to
be concerned with them and lets me teach you their unimportance. I could not
understand their importance to you if I had not once been tempted to believe in
them myself.
21
Let us undertake to learn this lesson together, so we can be free of them
together. I need devoted teachers who share my aim of healing the mind. The
Soul is far beyond the need of your protection or mine. Remember this:
22
23
In this world you need not have tribulation because
I have overcome the world.
That is why you should be of good cheer.
iii. The
Ego
and
False Autonomy
You have asked lately how the mind could ever have made the ego. This is a
perfectly reasonable question; in fact, the best question you could ask. There is,
however, no point in giving an historical answer because the past does not matter
in human terms, and history would not exist if the same errors were not being
repeated in the present.Abstract thought applies to knowledge because knowledge
is completely impersonal and examples are irrelevant to its understanding.
24
60
Ego and False Autonomy
Perception, however, is always specific and therefore quite concrete.
25
Each man makes one ego for himself, although it is subject to enormous
variation because of its instability, and one for everyone he perceives, which is
equally variable. Their interaction is a process which literally alters both because
they were not made either by or with the unalterable. It is particularly important
to realize that this alteration can and does occur as readily when the interaction
takes place in the mind as when it involves physical presence. Thinking about
another ego is as effective in changing relative perception as is physical interaction.
There could be no better example of the fact that the ego is an idea, though not
a reality-based thought.
26
Your own present state is a good example of how the mind made the ego.
You do have knowledge at times, but when you throw it away it is as if you never
had it. This willfulness is so apparent that one need only perceive it to see that
it does happen. If it can occur that way in the present, why is it surprising that it
occurred that way in the past? Psychology rests on the principle of the continuity
of behavior. Surprise is a reasonable response to the unfamiliar but hardly to
something that has occurred with such persistence. I am using your present state
as an example of how the mind can work, provided you fully recognize that it
need not work that way. Why are you surprised that something happened in the
dim past when it is so clearly happening right now?
27
You forget the love that animals have for their own offspring and the need
they feel to protect them. This is because they regard them as part of themselves.
No one disowns something he regards as a very real part of himself. Man reacts
to his ego much as God does to His Souls: with love, protection, and great
charity. The reaction of man to the self he made is not at all surprising. In fact it
duplicates in many ways how he will one day react to his real creations, which
are as timeless as he is.The question is not how man responds to his ego, but what
he believes he is.
28
Belief is an ego function, and as long as your origin is open to belief at
all, you are regarding it from an ego viewpoint. When teaching is no longer
necessary, you will merely know God. Belief that there is another way is the
loftiest idea of which ego thinking is capable. That is because it contains a hint
of recognition that the ego is not the self. Undermining the ego’s thought system
must be perceived as painful, even though this is anything but true. Babies scream
in rage if you take away a knife or a scissors, even though they may well harm
themselves if you do not. The speed-up has placed you in the same position.
29
You are not prepared, and in this sense you are babies. You have no sense of
61
real self-preservation and are very likely to decide that you need precisely what
would hurt you most. Whether you know it now or not, however, you have
willed to cooperate in a concerted and very commendable effort to become both
harmless and helpful, two attributes which must go together.Your attitudes, even
toward this, are necessarily conflicted because all attitudes are ego-based.This will
not last. Be patient awhile and remember that the outcome is as certain as God.
30
Only those who have a real and lasting sense of abundance can be truly
charitable. This is quite obvious when you consider the concepts involved.
To the ego, to give anything implies that you will do without it. When you
associate giving with sacrifice, then, you give only because you believe that you
are somehow getting something better so that you can do without the thing
you give. “Giving to get” is an inescapable law of the ego, which always evaluates
itself in relation to other egos and is therefore continually preoccupied with the
scarcity principle which gave rise to it. This is the meaning of Freud’s “reality
principle” since Freud thought of the ego as very weak and deprived, capable of
functioning only as a thing in need.
31
The “reality principle” of the ego is not real at all.The ego is forced to perceive
the “reality” of other egos because it cannot establish the reality of itself. In fact, its
whole perception of other egos as real is only an attempt to convince itself that
it is real. “Self esteem” in ego terms means nothing more than that the ego has
deluded itself into accepting its reality and is therefore temporarily less predatory.
This “self esteem” is always vulnerable to stress, a term which actually refers to a
condition in which the delusion of the ego’s reality is threatened. This produces
either ego deflation or ego inflation, resulting in either withdrawal or attack.
32
The ego literally lives by comparisons. This means that equality is beyond
its grasp and charity becomes impossible. The ego never gives out of abundance
because it was made as a substitute for it.That is why the concept of “getting” arose
in the ego’s thought system. All appetites are “getting” mechanisms, representing
the ego’s need to confirm itself. This is as true of bodily appetites as it is of the
so-called “higher” ego needs. Bodily appetites are not physical in origin. The ego
regards the body as its home and does try to satisfy itself through the body, but
the idea that this is possible is a decision of the ego, which is completely confused
about what is really possible. This accounts for its erratic nature.
33
The ego believes it is completely on its own, which is merely another way
of describing how it originated. This is such a fearful state that it can only turn
to other egos and try to unite with them in a feeble attempt at identification
or attack them in an equally feeble show of strength. It is not free, however, to
62
iii. The
Ego and False Autonomy
consider the validity of the premise itself because this premise is its foundation. The
ego is the belief of the mind that it is completely on its own. Its ceaseless attempts
to gain the Soul’s acknowledgment and thus to establish its own existence are
utterly useless.
34
The Soul in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does not attack it; it
merely cannot conceive of it at all. While the ego is equally unaware of the Soul,
it does perceive itself as rejected by “something” which is greater than itself. This
is why self-esteem in ego terms must be a delusion. The creations of God do not
create myths, although the creative efforts of man can turn to mythology. It can
do so, however, only under one condition; what man then makes is no longer
creative. Myths are entirely perceptions and are so ambiguous in form and so
characteristically good and evil in nature that the most benevolent of them is not
without fearful components, if only by innuendo.
35
Myths and magic are closely associated in that myths are usually related to
the ego origins and magic to the powers which the ego ascribes to itself. Every
mythological system includes some account of “the creation” and associates
this with its particular perception of magic. The “battle for survival” is nothing
more than the ego’s struggle to preserve itself and its interpretation of its own
beginning. This beginning is always associated with physical birth because no
one maintains that the ego existed before that point in time. The religiously
ego-oriented believe that the Soul existed before and will continue to exist
afterwards, after a temporary lapse in ego life. Some actually believe that the Soul
will be punished for this lapse, even though in reality it could not possibly know
anything about it.
36
The term “salvation” does not apply to the Soul, which is not in danger and
does not need to be salvaged. Salvation is nothing more than “right-mindedness,”
which is not the One-Mindedness of the Soul, but which must be accomplished
before the One-Mindedness can be restored. Right-mindedness dictates the next
step automatically because right perception is uniformly without attack so that
wrong-mindedness is obliterated. The ego cannot survive without judgment and
is laid aside accordingly. The mind then has only one direction in which it can
move. The direction which the mind will take is always automatic because it
cannot but be dictated by the thought system to which the mind adheres.
37
Every thought system has internal consistency, and this provides the basis for
the continuity of behavior. However, this is a matter of reliability and not validity.
“Reliable behavior” is a meaningful perception as far as ego thinking goes.
However, “valid behavior” is an expression which is inherently contradictory
63
iv. Love without
because validity is an end and behavior is a means. These cannot be combined
logically because when an end has been attained the means for its attainment are
no longer meaningful.
38
A hypothesis is either false or true, to be accepted or rejected accordingly. If
it is shown to be true, it becomes a fact, after which no one attempts to evaluate
it unless its status as fact is questioned. Every idea to which the ego has accorded
the status of fact is questionable because facts are in the realm of knowledge.
39
Confusing realms of discourse is a thinking error which philosophers have
recognized for centuries. Psychologists are generally quite deficient in this respect,
as are many theologians. Data from one realm of discourse do not mean anything
in another because they can be understood only within the thought system of
which they are a part. That is why psychologists are concentrating increasingly
on the ego in an attempt to unify their clearly unrelated data. It need hardly be
said that an attempt to relate the unrelated cannot succeed.
40
The more recent ecological emphases are but another ingenious way of trying
to impose order on chaos. We have already credited the ego with considerable
ingenuity, though not with creativeness. It should, however, be remembered that
inventiveness is really wasted effort, even in its most ingenious forms. We do
not have to explain anything. This is why we need not trouble ourselves with
inventiveness.The highly specific nature of invention is not worthy of the abstract
creativity of God’s creations.
iv.
Love
without
Conflict
You have never understood what “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you”
means. The reason you have not understood it is because it is not understandable
to the ego, which interprets it as if something outside is inside, and this does
not mean anything. The word “within” is unnecessary. The Kingdom of Heaven
is you. What else but you did the Creator create, and what else but you is His
Kingdom? This is the whole message of the Atonement, a message which in its
totality transcends the sum of its parts. Christmas is not a time; it is a state of
mind. The Christ Mind wills from the Soul not from the ego, and the Christ
Mind is yours.
42
You too have a kingdom which your Soul created. It has not ceased to create
because your ego has set you on the road of perception. Your Soul’s creations
are no more fatherless than you are. Your ego and your Soul will never be cocreators, but your Soul and your Creator will always be. Be confident that your
41
64
Conflict
creations are as safe as you are.
43
The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected,
and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen.
That was written in that form because it is a good thing to use as a kind of
a prayer in moments of temptation. It is a Declaration of Independence.You will
find it very helpful if you understand it fully.
45
In its characteristically upside-down way, the ego has taken the impulses from
the superconscious and perceives them as if they arise in the unconscious. The
ego judges what is to be accepted, and the impulses from the superconscious are
unacceptable to it because they clearly point to the nonexistence of the ego itself.
The ego therefore experiences threat and not only censors but also reinterprets
the data. However, as Freud correctly pointed out, what you have repressed can
retain a very active life beyond your awareness.
46
Repression thus operates to conceal not only the baser impulses but also the
most lofty ones from awareness because both are threatening to the ego and, being
concerned primarily with its own preservation in the face of threat, the ego
perceives them as the same. The threat-value of the lofty is actually much greater
to the ego because the pull of God Himself can hardly be equated with the pull
of human appetites. By perceiving them as the same, the ego attempts to save
itself from being swept away, as it would surely be in the presence of knowledge.
47
The upper level of the unconscious thus contains the Call of God as well
as the call of the body. That is why the basic conflict between love and fear
is unconscious; the ego cannot tolerate either and represses both by resorting
to inhibition. Society depends on inhibiting the latter, but salvation depends
on disinhibiting the former. The reason you need my help is because you have
repressed your own Guide and therefore need guidance. My role is to separate
the true from the false in your unconscious so it can break through the barriers
the ego has set up and shine into your minds. Against our united strength, the
ego cannot prevail.
48
It should be apparent to you by now why the ego regards the Soul as its
“enemy.”The ego arose from the separation, and its continued existence depends
on your continuing belief in the separation. Having reduced the Soul impulses to
the unconscious, the ego has to offer you some sort of reward for maintaining
this belief. All it can offer is a sense of temporary existence, which begins with its
own beginning and ends with its own ending. It tells you this life is your existence
because it is its own. Against this sense of temporary existence the Soul offers
44
65
v. The
you the knowledge of permanence and unshakable being. No one who has
experienced the revelation of this can ever fully believe in the ego again. How
can its meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of God?
49
You who identify with your egos cannot believe that God loves you. You
do not love what you have made, and what you made does not love you. Being
made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its own maker.
You cannot conceive of the real relationship which exists between God and His
Souls because of the hatred you have for the self you have made. You project
onto your own idea of yourself the will to separate, which conflicts with the love
you feel for what you made because you made it. No human love is without this
ambivalence, and since no ego has experienced love without ambivalence, the
concept is beyond its understanding.
50
Love will enter immediately into any mind which truly wants it, but it must
want it truly. This means that it wants it without ambivalence, and this kind of
wanting is wholly without the ego’s “drive to get.” There is a kind of experience
which is so different from anything the ego can offer that you will never recover.
The word “recover” is used quite literally here—you will never be able to cover or
hide again. It is necessary to repeat here that your belief in darkness and in hiding
is why the light cannot enter.The Bible gives many references to the immeasurable
gifts which are for you but for which you must ask. This is not a condition as the
ego sets conditions. It is the glorious condition of what you are.
51
No force except your own will is strong enough or worthy enough to guide
you. In this you are as free as God and must remain so forever.You can never be
bound except in honor, and that is always voluntary. Let us ask the Father in my
name to keep you mindful of His love for you and yours for Him. He has never
failed to answer this request because it asks only for what He has already willed.
Those who call truly are always answered. Thou shalt have no other gods before
Him because there are none.
52
It has never really entered your mind to give up every idea you ever had that
opposes knowledge.You retain thousands of little scraps of meanness which prevent
the Holy One from entering. Light cannot penetrate through the walls you make
to block it, and it is forever unwilling to destroy what you have made. No one
can see through a wall, but I can step around it. Watch your minds for the scraps
of meanness or you will be unable to ask me to do so. I can help you only as our
Father created us. I will love you and honor you and maintain complete respect
for what you have made, but I will neither honor it nor love it unless it is true.
53
I will never forsake you any more than God will, but I must wait as long as
66
Escape from Fear
you choose to forsake yourself. Because I wait in love and not in impatience,
you will surely ask me truly. I will come in response to a single unequivocal call.
Watch carefully and see what it is you are really asking for. Be very honest with
yourself about this, for we must hide nothing from each other. If you will really
try to do this, you have taken the first step toward preparing your mind for the
Holy One to enter. We will prepare for this together, for once He has come, you
will be ready to help me make other minds ready for Him. How long will you
deny Him His Kingdom?
54
In your own unconscious, deeply repressed by the ego, is the declaration
of your release. God has given you everything. This is the one fact that means the
ego does not exist and which therefore makes it profoundly afraid. In the ego’s
language, remember, “to have” and “to be” are different, but they are identical to
the Soul. The Soul knows that you both have everything and are everything. Any
distinction in this respect is meaningful only when the idea of “getting,” which
implies a lack, has already been accepted. That is why we made no distinction
before between having the Kingdom of God and being the Kingdom of God.
55
The calm being of God’s Kingdom, which in your sane mind is perfectly
conscious, is ruthlessly banished from the part of the mind which the ego rules.
The ego is desperate because it opposes literally invincible odds, whether you are
asleep or awake. Consider how much vigilance you have been willing to exert to
protect your ego and how little you have been willing to expend to protect your
higher mind. Who but the insane would undertake to believe what is not true
and then protect this belief at the cost of truth?
v. The
Escape
from
Fear
If you cannot hear the Voice of God, it is because you do not choose to listen.
The fact that you do listen to the voice of your ego is demonstrated by your
attitudes, your feelings, and your behavior.Your attitudes are obviously conflicted,
your feelings have a narrow range on the negative side but are never purely
joyous, and your behavior is either strained or unpredictable.Yet this is what you
want. This is what you are fighting to keep and what you are vigilant to save.Your
minds are filled with schemes to save the face of your egos, and you do not seek
the Face of God. The glass in which the ego seeks to see its face is dark indeed.
How can it maintain the trick of its existence except with mirrors? But where
you look to find yourself is up to you.
57
We have said that you cannot change your mind by changing your behavior,
but we have also said, and many times before, that you can change your mind.
56
67
When your mood tells you that you have chosen wrongly, and this is so whenever
you are not joyous, then know this need not be. In every case you have thought
wrongly about some Soul that God created and are perceiving images your ego
makes in a darkened glass. Think honestly what you have thought that God
would not have thought and what you have not thought that God would have you
think. Search sincerely for what you have done and left undone accordingly, and
then change your minds to think with God’s.
58
This may seem hard to you, but it is much easier than trying to think against
it. Your mind is one with God’s. Denying this and thinking otherwise has held
your ego together but has literally split your mind. As a loving brother, I am
deeply concerned with your mind and urge you to follow my example as you
look at yourselves and at each other and see in both the glorious creations of a
glorious Father.
59
When you are sad, know that this need not be. Depression always arises ultimately
from a sense of being deprived of something you want and do not have. Know
you are deprived of nothing except by your own decisions, and then decide
otherwise.
60
When you are anxious, know that all anxiety comes from the capriciousness of
the ego and need not be. You can be as vigilant against the ego’s dictates as for them.
61
When you feel guilty, know that the ego has indeed violated the laws of God,
but you have not. Leave the sins of the ego to me. That is what Atonement is for.
But until you change your mind about those your ego has hurt, the Atonement
cannot release you. As long as you feel guilty your ego is in command because
only the ego can experience guilt. This need not be.
62
Watch your mind for the temptations of the ego and do not be deceived by
it. Know it offers you nothing.When you have given up this voluntary dispiriting,
you will see how your mind can focus and rise above fatigue and heal. Yet you
are not sufficiently vigilant against the demands of the ego to disengage yourself.
This need not be.
63
The habit of engaging with God and His creations is easily made if you actively
refuse to let your minds slip away. The problem is not one of concentration; it is
the belief that no one, including yourself, is worth consistent effort. Side with me
consistently against this deception, and do not permit this shabby belief to pull you
back. The disheartened are useless to themselves and to me, but only the ego can
be disheartened. Have you really considered how many opportunities you have to
gladden yourselves and how many of them you have refused? There is no limit to
the power of a Son of God, but he himself can limit the expression of his power
68
v. The
Escape from Fear
as much as he chooses.
64
Your mind and mine can unite in shining your ego away and releasing the
strength of God into everything you think and will and do. Do not settle for
anything less than this, and refuse to accept anything but this as your goal. Watch
your minds carefully for any beliefs that hinder its accomplishment, and step away
from them. Judge how well you have done this by your own feelings, for this is
the one right use of judgment. Judgment, like any other defense, can be used to
attack or protect, to hurt or to heal.The ego should be brought to your judgment
and found wanting there. Without your own allegiance, protection, and love, it
cannot exist. Judge your ego truly and you must withdraw allegiance, protection,
and love from it.
65
You are mirrors of truth in which God Himself shines in perfect light. To
the ego’s dark glass you need but say, “I will not look there because I know these
images are not true.”Then let the Holy One shine on you in peace, knowing that
this and only this must be. His Mind shone on you in your creation and brought
your mind into being. His Mind still shines on you and must shine through you.
Your ego cannot prevent Him from shining on you, but it can prevent you from
letting Him shine through you.
66
The first coming of Christ is just another name for the creation, for Christ is
the Son of God. The second coming of Christ means nothing more than the end
of the ego’s rule over part of the minds of men and the healing of the mind. I was
created like you in the first, and I have called you to join with me in the second.
If you will think over your lives, you will see how carefully the preparations were
made. I am in charge of the second coming, and my judgment, which is used
only for protection, cannot be wrong because it never attacks. Yours is so distorted
that you believe I was mistaken in choosing you. I assure you this is a mistake of
your egos. Do not mistake it for humility.
67
Your egos are trying to convince you that they are real and I am not because,
if I am real, I am no more real than you are.That knowledge, and I assure you that
it is knowledge, means that Christ must come into your minds and heal them.
Although I am not attacking your egos, I am working with your higher mind
whether you are asleep or awake, just as your ego does with your lower mind. I
am your vigilance in this because you are too confused to recognize your own
hope. I was not mistaken. Your minds will elect to join with mine, and together
we are invincible.
68
You will yet come together in my name, and your sanity will be restored. I
raised the dead by knowing that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the
69
vi. The
living God created.Why do you believe it is harder for me to inspire the dispirited
or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty
in miracles; you do. I have called, and you will answer. I know that miracles are
natural because they are expressions of love. My calling you is as natural as your
answer and as inevitable.
vi. The
Ego-Body Illusion
All things work together for good.There are no exceptions except in the ego’s
judgment. Control is a central factor in what the ego permits into consciousness
and one to which it devotes its maximum vigilance.This is not the way a balanced
mind holds together. Its control is unconscious. The ego is further off balance by
keeping its primary motivation unconscious and raising control rather than sensible
judgment to predominance.The ego has every reason to do this according to the
thought system which gave rise to it and which it serves. Sane judgment would
inevitably judge against the ego and must be obliterated by the ego in the interest
of its self-preservation.
70
A major source of the ego’s off-balanced state is its lack of discrimination
between impulses from God and from the body. Any thought system which makes
this confusion must be insane.Yet this demented state is essential to the ego, which
judges only in terms of threat or non-threat to itself. In one sense the ego’s fear
of the idea of God is at least logical since this idea does dispel the ego. Fear of
dissolution from the Higher Source, then, makes some sense in ego-terms. But fear
of the body, with which the ego identifies so closely, is more blatantly senseless.
71
The body is the ego’s home by its own election. It is the only identification
with which the ego feels safe because the body’s vulnerability is its own best
argument that you cannot be of God. This is the belief that the ego sponsors
eagerly. Yet the ego hates the body because it does not accept the idea that the
body is good enough to be its home. Here is where the mind becomes actually
dazed. Being told by the ego that it is really part of the body and that the body is
its protector, the mind is also constantly informed that the body can not protect
it. This, of course, is not only accurate but perfectly obvious.
72
Therefore the mind asks, “Where can I go for protection?” to which the ego
replies, “Turn to me.” The mind, and not without cause, reminds the ego that it
has itself insisted that it is identified with the body, so there is no point in turning
to it for protection. The ego has no real answer to this because there is none, but
it does have a typical solution. It obliterates the question from the mind’s awareness.
Once unconscious, the question can and does produce uneasiness, but it cannot
69
70
Ego-Body Illusion
be answered because it cannot be asked.This is the question which must be asked:
“Where am I to go for protection?” Even the insane ask it unconsciously, but it
requires real sanity to ask it consciously.
73
When the Bible says, “Seek and ye shall find,” it does not mean that you
should seek blindly and desperately for something you would not recognize.
Meaningful seeking is consciously undertaken, consciously organized, and
consciously directed. The goal must be formulated clearly and kept in mind. As a
teacher with some experience, let me remind you that learning and wanting to
learn are inseparable. All learners learn best when they believe that what they are
trying to learn is of value to them. However, values in this world are hierarchical,
and not everything you may want to learn has lasting value.
74
Indeed, many of the things you want to learn are chosen because their value
will not last. The ego thinks it is an advantage not to commit itself to anything
that is eternal because the eternal must come from God. Eternalness is the one
function which the ego has tried to develop but has systematically failed. It may
surprise you to learn that had the ego wished to do so it could have made the
eternal because, as a product of the mind, it is endowed with the power of its own
creator. However, the decision to do this, rather than the ability to do it, is what the
ego cannot tolerate. That is because the decision, from which the ability would
naturally develop, would necessarily involve accurate perception, a state of clarity
which the ego, fearful of being judged truly, must avoid.
75
The results of this dilemma are peculiar, but no more so than the dilemma
itself. The ego has reacted characteristically here as elsewhere because mental
illness, which is always a form of ego involvement, is not a matter of reliability as
much as of validity. The ego compromises with the issue of the eternal, just as it
does with all issues that touch on the real question in any way. By compromising
in connection with all tangential questions, it hopes to hide the real question and
keep it out of mind. The ego’s characteristic busyness with non-essentials is for
precisely that purpose.
76
Consider the alchemist’s age-old attempts to turn base metal into gold. The
one question which the alchemist did not permit himself to ask was, “What for?”
He could not ask this because it would immediately become apparent that there
was no sense in his efforts even if he succeeded. If gold became more plentiful
its value would decrease, and his own purpose would be defeated. The ego has
countenanced some strange compromises with the idea of the eternal, making
many odd attempts to relate the concept to the unimportant in an effort to satisfy
the mind without jeopardizing itself. Thus, it has permitted minds to devote
71
vii. The
themselves to the possibility of perpetual motion, but not to perpetual thoughts.
77
Ideational preoccupations with problems set up to be incapable of solution
are also favorite ego devices for impeding the strong-willed from making real
learning progress. The problems of squaring the circle and carrying pi to infinity
are good examples. A more recent ego attempt is particularly noteworthy. The
idea of preserving the body by suspension, thus giving it the kind of limited
immortality which the ego can tolerate, is among its more recent appeals to
the mind. It is noticeable, however, that in all these diversionary tactics, the one
question which is never asked by those who pursue them is, “What for?”
78
This is the question which you must learn to ask in connection with everything
your mind wishes to undertake. What is the purpose? Whatever it is, you cannot
doubt that it will channelize your efforts automatically.When you make a decision
of purpose, then, you have made a decision about your future effort, a decision
which will remain in effect unless you change the decision.
79
Psychologists are in a good position to realize that the ego is capable of making
and accepting as real some very distorted associations. The confusion of sex with
aggression and the resulting behavior, which is perceived as the same for both,
serves as an example. This is “understandable” to the psychologist and does not
produce surprise.The lack of surprise, however, is not a sign of understanding. It is a
symptom of the psychologist’s ability to accept as reasonable a compromise which
is clearly senseless—to attribute it to the mental illness of the patient rather than his
own and to limit his questions about both the patient and himself to the trivial.
80
Such relatively minor confusions of the ego are not among its more profound
misassociations, although they do reflect them.Your egos have been blocking the
more important questions which your minds should ask.You do not understand a
patient while you yourselves are willing to limit the questions you raise about his
mind because you are also accepting these limits for yours.This makes you unable
to heal him and yourselves. Be always unwilling to adapt to any situation in which
miracle-mindedness is unthinkable. That state in itself is enough to demonstrate
that the perception is wrong.
vii. The
Constant State
It cannot be emphasized too often that correcting perception is merely a
temporary expedient. It is necessary to do so only because misperception is a
block to knowledge, while accurate perception is a stepping-stone towards it. The
whole value of right perception lies in the inevitable judgment which it entails
81
72
Constant State
that it is unnecessary. This removes the block entirely. You may ask how this is
possible as long as you appear to be living in this world, and since this is a sensible
question, it has a sensible answer. You must be careful, however, that you really
understand the question. What is the “you” who are living in this world?
82
Immortality is a constant state. It is as true now as it ever was or ever will be
because it implies no change at all. It is not a continuum nor is it understood by
being compared to an opposite. Knowledge never involves comparisons.That is its
essential difference from everything else the mind can grasp. “A little knowledge”
is not dangerous except to the ego. Vaguely it senses threat and being unable to
realize that “a little knowledge” is a meaningless phrase since “all” and “a little”
in this context are the same, the ego decides that, since “all” is impossible, the
fear does not lie there. “A little,” however, is a scarcity concept, and this the ego
understands well. “A little,” then, is perceived as the real threat.
83
The essential thing to remember is that the ego does not recognize the real
source of its perceived threat, and if you associate yourself with the ego, you do
not perceive the whole situation as it is. Only your allegiance to it gives the ego
any power over you.
84
We have spoken of the ego as if it were a separate thing acting on its own.
This was necessary to persuade you that you cannot dismiss it lightly and must
realize how much of your thinking is ego-directed. We cannot safely let it go at
that, however, or you will regard yourselves as necessarily conflicted as long as
you are here, or more properly, as long as you believe that you are here.
85
The ego is nothing more than a part of your belief about yourselves. Your
other life has continued without interruption and has been and always will be
totally unaffected by your attempts to disassociate. The ratio of repression and
dissociation varies with the individual ego-illusion, but dissociation is always
involved or you would not believe that you are here. In learning to escape from
the illusions you have made, your great debt to each other is something you must
never forget. It is exactly the same debt that you owe to me. Whenever you react
egotistically towards each other, you are throwing away the graciousness of your
indebtedness and the holy perception it would produce.
86
The term “holy” can be used here because as you learn how much you
are indebted to the whole Sonship, which includes me, you come as close to
knowledge as perception ever can. The gap is then so small that knowledge can
easily flow across it and obliterate it forever. You have very little trust in me as
yet, but it will increase as you turn more and more often to me instead of your
egos for guidance. The results will convince you increasingly that your choice in
73
viii. Creation and
turning to me is the only sane one you can make. No one who has learned from
experience that one choice brings peace and joy while another brings chaos and
disaster needs much conditioning.
87
The ego cannot withstand the conditioning process because the process itself
demonstrates that there is another way. Conditioning by rewards has always been
more effective than conditioning by pain because pain is an ego-illusion and can
never induce more than a temporary effect. The rewards of God, however, are
immediately recognized as eternal. Since this recognition is made by you and not
the ego, the recognition itself establishes that you and your ego cannot be identical.
You may believe that you have already accepted the difference, but you are by no
means convinced as yet. The very fact that you are preoccupied with the idea of
escaping from the ego shows this.
88
You cannot escape from the ego by humbling it or controlling it or punishing
it. Remember that the ego and the Soul do not know each other. The separated
mind cannot maintain the separation except by dissociating. Having done this,
it utilizes repression against all truly natural impulses, not because the ego is a
separate thing, but because you want to believe that you are. The ego is a device
for maintaining this belief, but it is still only your willingness to use the device
that enables it to endure.
89
My trust in you is greater than yours in me at the moment, but it will
not always be that way. Your mission is very simple. You have been chosen to
live so as to demonstrate that you are not an ego. I repeat that I do not choose
God’s channels wrongly. The Holy One shares my trust and always approves my
Atonement decisions because my will is never out of accord with His. I have told
you before that I am in charge of the whole Atonement. This is only because I
completed my part in it as a man and can now complete it through other men.
My chosen receiving and sending channels cannot fail because I will lend them
my strength as long as theirs is wanting.
90
I will go with you to the Holy One, and through my perception, He can
bridge the little gap.Your gratitude to each other is the only gift I want. I will bring
it to God for you, knowing that to know your brother is to know God. A little
knowledge is an all-encompassing thing. If you are grateful to each other, you
are grateful to God for what He created. Through your gratitude, you can come
to know each other, and one moment of real recognition makes all men your
brothers because they are all of your Father. Love does not conquer all things,
but it does set all things right. Because you are all the Kingdom of God, I can
lead you back to your own creations, which you do not yet know.What has been
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Communication
dissociated is still there.
91
As you come closer to a brother, you do approach me and, as you withdraw
from him, I become distant to you. Your giant step forward was to insist on a
“collaborative venture.” This does not go against the true spirit of meditation;
it is inherent in it. Meditation is a collaborative venture with God. It cannot be
undertaken successfully by those who disengage themselves from the Sonship
because they are disengaging themselves from me. God will come to you only as
you will give Him to your brothers. Learn first of them, and you will be ready to
hear God as you hear them. That is because the function of love is one.
92
How can you teach someone the value of something he has deliberately
thrown away? He must have thrown it away because he did not value it. You
can only show him how miserable he is without it and bring it near very slowly,
so he can learn how his misery lessens as he approaches it. This conditions him
to associate his misery with its absence and to associate the opposite of misery
with its presence. It gradually becomes desirable as he changes his mind about
its worth.
93
I am conditioning you to associate misery with the ego and joy with the
Soul.You have conditioned yourselves the other way around. A far greater reward,
however, will break through any conditioning if it is repeatedly offered whenever
the old habit pattern is broken.You are still free to choose, but can you really want
the rewards of the ego in the presence of the rewards of God?
viii.
Creation
and
Communication
It should be clear by now that, while the content of any particular egoillusion does not matter, it is usually more helpful to correct it in a specific
context. Ego-illusions are quite specific, although they frequently change and
although the mind is naturally abstract.The mind nevertheless becomes concrete
voluntarily as soon as it splits. However, only part of it splits, so only part of it is
concrete. The concrete part is the same part that believes in the ego because the
ego depends on the specific. It is the part that believes your existence means you
are separate.
95
Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships
that imply being. The ego is thus against communication except in so far as it is
utilized to establish separateness rather than to abolish it. The communication
system of the ego is based on its own thought system, as is everything else it
dictates. Its communication is controlled by its need to protect itself, and it
94
75
ix. True
will disrupt communication when it experiences threat. While this is always
so, individual egos perceive different kinds of threat which are quite specific
in their own judgment. For example, although all forms of perceived demands
may be classified or judged by the ego as coercive communication which must
be disrupted, the response of breaking communication will nevertheless be to a
specific person or persons.
96
The specificity of the ego’s thinking, then, results in a spurious kind of
generalization which is really not abstract at all. It will respond in certain specific
ways to all stimuli which it perceives as related. In contrast the Soul reacts in the
same way to everything it knows is true and does not respond at all to anything
else. Nor does it make any attempt to establish what is true. It knows that what is
true is everything that God created. It is in complete and direct communication
with every aspect of creation because it is in complete and direct communication
with its Creator.
97
This communication is the Will of God. Creation and communication
are synonymous. God created every mind by communicating His Mind to it,
thus establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of His Mind and Will.
Since only beings of a like order can truly communicate, His creations naturally
communicate with Him and like Him. This communication is perfectly abstract
in that its quality is universal in application and not subject to any judgment,
any exception, or any alteration. God created you by this and for this. The mind
can distort its function, but it cannot endow itself with functions it was not
given. That is why the mind cannot totally lose the ability to communicate, even
though it may refuse to utilize it on behalf of being.
98
Existence as well as being rests on communication. Existence, however, is
specific in how, what, and with whom communication is judged to be worth
undertaking. Being is completely without these distinctions. It is a state in which
the mind is in communication with everything that is real, including the Soul. To
whatever extent you permit this state to be curtailed, you are limiting your sense
of your own reality, which becomes total only by your recognizing all reality in the
glorious context of its real relationship to you.This is your reality. Do not desecrate
it or recoil from it. It is your real home, your real temple, and your real Self.
99
God, who encompasses all being, nevertheless created beings who have
everything individually but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing
that is real can be increased except by sharing. That is why God Himself created
you. Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation
means. “How,” “what,” and “to whom” are irrelevant because real creation gives
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Rehabilitation
everything since it can create only like itself. Remember that in being there is no
difference between having and being as there is in existence. In the state of being,
the mind gives everything always.
100
The Bible repeatedly states that you should praise God. This hardly means
that you should tell Him how wonderful He is. He has no ego with which to
accept such thanks and no perception with which to judge such offerings. But
unless you take your part in the creation, His joy is not complete because yours
is incomplete. And this He does know. He knows it in His own Being and its
experience of His Son’s experience. The constant going out of His love is blocked
when His channels are closed, and He is lonely when the minds He created do
not communicate fully with Him.
101
God has kept your kingdom for you, but He cannot share His joy with you
until you know it with your whole mind. Even revelation is not enough because
it is communication from God. It is not enough until it is shared. God does not
need revelation returned to Him, which would clearly be impossible, but He
does want revelation brought to others. This cannot be done with the actual
revelation because its content cannot be expressed, and it is intensely personal to
the mind which receives it. It can, however, still be returned by that mind through
its attitudes to other minds which the knowledge from the revelation brings.
102
God is praised whenever any mind learns to be wholly helpful. This is
impossible without being wholly harmless because the two beliefs coexist. The
truly helpful are invulnerable because they are not protecting their egos, so that
nothing can hurt them.Their helpfulness is their praise of God, and He will return
their praise of Him because they are like Him, and they can rejoice together.
God goes out to them and through them, and there is great joy throughout the
Kingdom. Every mind that is changed adds to this joy with its own individual
willingness to share in it. The truly helpful are God’s miracle workers whom
I direct until we are all united in the joy of the Kingdom. I will direct you to
wherever you can be truly helpful and to whoever can follow my guidance
through you.
ix. True
Rehabilitation
Every mind which is split needs rehabilitation. The medical orientation to
rehabilitation emphasizes the body, while the vocational orientation stresses the
ego. The “team” approach generally leads more to confusion than to anything
else because it is too often misused as a way of exerting the ego’s domination
over other egos, rather than as a real experiment in the cooperation of minds.
103
77
Rehabilitation as a movement is an improvement over the overt neglect of those
in need of help, but it is often little more than a painful attempt on the part of
the halt to lead the blind.
104
The ego is likely to fear broken bodies because it cannot tolerate them.
The ego cannot tolerate ego weakness either without ambivalence because it is
afraid of its own weakness as well as the weakness of its chosen home. When it
is threatened, the ego blocks your natural impulse to help, placing you under the
strain of divided will.You may then be tempted to withdraw to allow your ego to
recover and to gain enough strength to be helpful again on a basis limited enough
not to threaten your ego but too limited to give you joy. Those with broken
bodies are often looked down on by the ego because of its belief that nothing
but a perfect body is worthy as its own temple.
105
A mind that recoils from a hurt body is in great need of rehabilitation itself.
All symptoms of hurt need true helpfulness, and whenever they are met with this,
the mind that so meets them heals itself. Rehabilitation is an attitude of praising
God as He Himself knows praise. He offers praise to you, and you must offer
it to others. The chief handicaps of the clinicians lie in their attitudes to those
whom their egos perceive as weakened and damaged. By these evaluations, they
have weakened and damaged their own helpfulness and have thus set their own
rehabilitation back. Rehabilitation is not concerned either with the ego’s fight for
control or its need to avoid and withdraw. You can do much on behalf of your
own rehabilitation and that of others if in a situation calling for healing you think
of it this way:
106
I am here only to be truly helpful.
I am here to represent Christ,Who sent me.
I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do
because He Who sent me will direct me.
I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.
I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal.
five
Healing and Wholeness
i.
T
o heal is to make happy. I have told you before to think how many
opportunities you have to gladden yourselves and how many you have
refused. This is exactly the same as telling you that you have refused to heal
yourselves. The light that belongs to you is the light of joy. Radiance is not
associated with sorrow. Depression is often contagious but, although it may affect
those who come in contact with it, they do not yield to the influence wholeheartedly. But joy calls forth an integrated willingness to share in it and thus
promotes the mind’s natural impulse to respond as one.
5:2
Those who attempt to heal without being wholly joyous themselves call
forth different kinds of responses at the same time and thus deprive others of the
joy of responding whole-heartedly. To be whole-hearted, you must be happy. If
fear and love cannot coexist and if it is impossible to be wholly fearful and remain
alive, then the only possible whole state is that of love. There is no difference
between love and joy. Therefore, the only possible whole state is the wholly
joyous. To heal or to make joyous is therefore the same as to integrate and to
make one. That is why it makes no difference to what part or by what part of the
Sonship the healing is done. Every part benefits and benefits equally.
3
You are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers
anywhere.You should want to bless them in return out of gratitude.You do not
have to know them individually or they you.The light is so strong that it radiates
throughout the Sonship and returns thanks to the Father for radiating His joy
upon it. Only God’s holy Children are worthy to be channels of His beautiful joy
because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it. It is impossible
for a Child of God to love his neighbor except as himself.That is why the healer’s
prayer is:
4
78
Introduction
Let me know this brother as I know myself.
79
iii. The
Chapter 5: HEALING AND WHOLENESS
ii.
Healing As Joining
Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness and
become glad.This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them
and lets God Himself go out into them and through them. Only the healed mind
can experience revelation with lasting effect because revelation is an experience
of pure joy. If you do not choose to be wholly joyous, your mind cannot have
what it does not choose to be. Remember that the Soul knows no difference
between “being” and “having.” The higher mind thinks according to the laws
which the Soul obeys and therefore honors only the laws of God. To Him, getting is meaningless and giving is all. Having everything, the Soul holds everything
by giving it and thus creates as the Father created.
6
If you think about it, you will see that, while this kind of thinking is totally
alien to having things, even to the lower mind it is quite comprehensible in
connection with ideas. If you share a physical possession, you do divide its
ownership. If you share an idea, however, you do not lessen it. All of it is still
yours, although all of it has been given away. Further, if the person to whom you
give it accepts it as his, he reinforces it in your mind, and thus increases it. If you
can accept the concept that the world is one of ideas, the whole belief in the false
association which the ego makes between giving and losing is gone.
7
Let us start our process of reawakening with just a few simple concepts:
5
8
Thoughts increase by being given away.
The more who believe in them, the stronger they become.
Everything is an idea.
How, then, is it possible that giving and losing can be
meaningfully associated?
This is the invitation to the Holy Spirit. I told you that I could reach up and
bring the Holy Spirit down to you, but I can bring Him to you only at your own
invitation. The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your own right mind. He was
also mine. The Bible says, “May the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus,”
and uses this as a blessing. It is the blessing of miracle-mindedness. It asks that you
may think as I thought, joining with me in Christ-thinking.
10
The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which is symbolic. He
is referred to in the Bible as the Healer, the Comforter, and the Guide. He is
also described as something “separate,” apart from the Father and from the Son.
I myself said, “If I go I will send you another comforter, and He will abide with
you.”The Holy Spirit is a difficult concept to grasp precisely because it is symbolic
9
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Mind of the Atonement
and therefore open to many different interpretations. As a man and as one of
God’s creations, my right thinking, which came from the Universal Inspiration
which is the Holy Spirit, taught me first and foremost that this Inspiration is for
all. I could not have It myself without knowing this.
11
The word “know” is proper in this context because the Holy Inspiration is
so close to knowledge that it calls it forth; or better, allows it to come. We have
spoken before of the higher or the “true” perception, which is so close to truth
that God Himself can flow across the little gap. Knowledge is always ready to
flow everywhere, but it cannot oppose. Therefore, you can obstruct it, although
you can never lose it. The Holy Spirit is the Christ Mind, which senses the
knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into being with the separation as
a protection, inspiring the beginning of the Atonement at the same time. Before
that, there was no need for healing and no one was comfortless.
iii. The
Mind
of the
Atonement
God honored even the miscreations of His Children because they had made
them, but He also blessed them with a way of thinking that could raise their
perceptions until they became so lofty that they could reach almost back to Him.
The Holy Spirit is the Mind of the Atonement. It represents a state of mind
that comes close enough to one-mindedness that transfer to it is at last possible.
Transfer depends on common elements in the old learning and the new situation
to which it is transferred. Perception is not knowledge, but it can be transferred
to knowledge or cross over into it. It might even be more helpful here to use the
literal meaning of “carried” over since the last step is taken by God.
13
The Holy Spirit, the shared Inspiration of all the Sonship, induces a kind of
perception in which many elements are like those in the Kingdom of Heaven
itself.
14
First, its universality is perfectly clear, and no one who receives it could ever
believe for one instant that sharing it involves anything but gain.
15
Second, it is incapable of attack and is therefore truly open. This means
that, although it does not engender knowledge, it does not obstruct it in any way.
There is a point at which sufficient quantitative changes produce real qualitative
differences. The next point requires real understanding because it is the point at
which the shift occurs:
16
Finally, it points the way beyond the healing which it brings and leads the
mind beyond its own integration into the paths of creation.
12
81
iv. The Voice
Healing is not creating; it is reparation. The Holy Spirit promotes healing by
looking beyond it to what the Children of God were before healing was needed
and will be when they have been healed. This alteration of the time sequence
should be quite familiar because it is very similar to the shift in time perception
which the miracle introduces. The Holy Spirit is the motivation for miraclemindedness, the will to heal the separation by letting it go. This will is in you
because God placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep, you
cannot obliterate it.
18
God Himself keeps this will alive by transmitting it from His Mind to yours
as long as there is time. It is partly His and partly yours. The miracle itself is
just this fusion or union of will between Father and Son. The Holy Spirit is
the spirit of joy. He is the Call to return with which God blessed the minds of
His separated Sons. This is the vocation of the mind. The mind had no calling
until the separation because before that it had only being and would not have
understood the call to right thinking. The Holy Spirit was God’s Answer to the
separation, the means by which the Atonement could repair until the whole
mind returned to creating.
19
The Atonement and the separation began at the same time.When man made
the ego, God placed in him the call to joy.This call is so strong that the ego always
dissolves at its sound. That is why you can choose to listen to two voices within
you. One you made yourself and that one is not of God. But the other is given
you by God Who asks you only to listen to it. The Holy Spirit is in you in a very
literal sense. His is the Voice that calls you back to where you were before and
will be again.
17
iv. The Voice
For God
It is possible even in this world to hear only that Voice and no other. It takes
effort and great willingness to learn. It is the final lesson that I learned, and God’s
Sons are as equal as learners as they are as Souls. The Voice of the Holy Spirit is
the call to Atonement or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the
Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call
to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the
Sons of God to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy.
21
You are the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter
your minds, and so you need a new light.The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you
must let banish the idea of darkness. His is the glory before which dissociation
falls away and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own. Before the
20
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For God
separation you did not need guidance. You knew as you will know again, but as
you do not know now. God does not guide because He can share only perfect
knowledge. Guidance is evaluative because it implies that there is a right way and
also a wrong way, one to be chosen and the other to be avoided. By choosing one,
you give up the other.
22
This is a conflict state. It means that knowledge has been lost because knowledge
is sure. God is not in you in a literal sense; you are part of Him. When you chose
to leave Him, He gave you a Voice to speak for Him because He could no longer
share His knowledge with you without hindrance. Direct communication was
broken because you had made another voice through another will. The Holy
Spirit calls you both to remember and to forget.You have chosen to be in a state
of opposition in which opposites are possible. As a result, there are choices which
you must make. In the holy state, the will is free in the sense that its creative power
is unlimited, but choice itself is meaningless.
23
Freedom to choose is the same power as freedom to create, but its application
is different. Choosing means divided will.The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing.
This way is in you because there is also another way. God did not leave His
Children comfortless, even though they chose to leave Him. The voice they put
in their minds was not the voice of His Will for which the Holy Spirit speaks.The
call to return is stronger than the call to depart, but it speaks in a different way.
24
The Voice of the Holy Spirit does not command because it is incapable
of arrogance. It does not demand because it does not seek control. It does not
overcome because it does not attack. It merely reminds. It is compelling only
because of what it reminds you of. It brings to your mind the other way, remaining
quiet even in the midst of the turmoil you have made for yourselves. The Voice
for God is always quiet because it speaks of peace.Yet peace is stronger than war
because it heals. War is division, not increase. No one gains from strife.
25
“What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?”
That means that if he listens to the wrong voice, he has lost sight of his Soul. He
cannot lose it, but he can not know it. It is therefore lost to him until he chooses right.
The Holy Spirit is your Guide in choosing. He is the part of your mind which
always speaks for the right choice because He speaks for God. He is your remaining
communication with God, which you can interrupt but cannot destroy.
26
The Holy Spirit is the way in which God’s Will can be done on earth as
it is in Heaven. Both Heaven and earth are in you because the call of both is
in your will and therefore in your mind. The Voice for God comes from your
own altars to Him. These altars are not things; they are devotions. Yet you have
83
v. The
other devotions now. Your divided devotion has given you the two voices, and
you must choose at which altar you will to serve. The call you answer now is an
evaluation because it is a decision. The decision itself is very simple. It is made on
the basis of which call is worth more to you.
27
My mind will always be like yours because we were created as equals. It was
only my decision that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. My only gift to
you is to help you make the same decision for yourself. The will for this decision
is the will to share it because the decision itself is the decision to share. It is made
by giving and is therefore the one act of mind that resembles true creation. You
understand the role of “models” in the learning process and the importance of
the models you value and choose to follow in determining what you will to
learn. I am your model for decision. By deciding for God, I showed you that this
decision can be made and that you can make it.
28
I promised you that the mind that made the decision for me is also in you
and that you can let it change you just as it changed me.This mind is unequivocal
because it hears only one voice and answers in only one way.You are the light of
the world with me. Rest does not come from sleeping but from waking. The
Holy Spirit is the call to awake and be glad. The world is very tired because it
is the idea of weariness. Our task is the joyous one of waking it to the Call for
God. Everyone will answer the Call of the Holy Spirit, or the Sonship cannot be
as one. What better vocation could there be for any part of the Kingdom than to
restore it to the perfect integration that can make it whole?
29
Hear only this through the Holy Spirit within you, and teach your brothers
to listen as I am teaching you. When you are tempted by the wrong voice, call
on me to remind you how to heal by sharing my decision and making it stronger.
As we share this goal we increase its power to attract the whole Sonship and to
bring it back into the Oneness in which it was created. Remember that “yoke”
means “join together” and “burden” means “message.” Let us reconsider the
Biblical statement, “My yoke is easy and my burden light” in this way: “Let us
join together, for my message is light.”
30
I came into your minds because you had grown vaguely aware of the fact
that there is another way or another Voice. Having given this invitation to the
Holy Spirit, I could come to provide the model for how to think. Psychology has
become the study of behavior, but no one denies the basic law that behavior is a
response to motivation, and motivation is will. I have enjoined you to behave as
I behaved, but we must respond to the same mind to do this. This mind is the
Holy Spirit, whose will is for God always. He teaches you how to keep me as the
84
Guide to Salvation
model for your thought and to behave like me as a result.
31
The power of our joint motivation is beyond belief but not beyond
accomplishment. What we can accomplish together has no limits because the
Call for God is the call to the unlimited. Child of God, my message is for you to
hear and give away as you answer the Holy Spirit within you.
v. The
Guide
to
Salvation
The way to learn to know your brother is by perceiving the Holy Spirit in
him.We have already said that the Holy Spirit is the bridge or thought-transfer of
perception to knowledge, so we can use the terms as if they were related because
in His mind they are.The relationship must be in His mind because, unless it were,
the separation between the two ways of thinking would not be open to healing.
He is part of the Holy Trinity because His mind is partly yours and also partly
God’s. This needs clarification, not in statement, since we have said it before, but
in experience.
33
The Holy Spirit is the idea of healing. Being thought, the idea gains as it is
shared. Being the Call for God, it is also the idea of God. Since you are part of
God, it is also the idea of yourself as well as of all the parts of God.The idea of the
Holy Spirit shares the property of other ideas because it follows the laws of the
Universe of which it is a part. Therefore, it is strengthened by being given away.
It increases in you as you give it to your brothers. Since thoughts do not have to
be conscious to exist, your brother does not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit
either in himself or in you for this miracle to occur.
34
Your brother may have dissociated the Call for God, just as you have. The
dissociation is healed in both of you as you become aware of the Call for God in
him and thus acknowledge its being. There are two ways of seeing your brother
which are diametrically opposed to each other. They must both be in your mind
because you are the perceiver.They must also be in his because you are perceiving
him. See him through the Holy Spirit in his mind, and you will recognize Him in
yours.What you acknowledge in your brother you are acknowledging in yourself,
and what you share you strengthen.
35
The Voice of the Holy Spirit is weak in you. That is why you must share it.
It must be increased in strength before you can hear it. It is impossible to hear it
in yourself while it is so weak in your own mind. It is not weak in itself, but it
is limited by your unwillingness to hear it. Will itself is an idea and is therefore
strengthened by being shared. If you make the mistake of looking for the Holy
32
85
vi. Therapy and Teaching
Spirit in yourself alone, your meditations will frighten you because by adopting
the ego’s viewpoint you are undertaking an ego-alien journey with the ego as
guide. This is bound to produce fear.
36
Delay is of the ego because time is its concept. Delay is obviously a time
idea. Both time and delay are meaningless in eternity. We have said before that
the Holy Spirit is God’s answer to the ego. Everything of which the Holy Spirit
reminds you is in direct opposition to the ego’s notions because true and false
perceptions are themselves opposed. The Holy Spirit has the task of undoing what
the ego has made. He undoes it in the same realm of discourse in which the ego
itself operates, or the mind would be unable to understand the change.
37
We have repeatedly emphasized that one level of the mind is not understandable
to another. So it is with the ego and the Soul, with time and eternity. Eternity is
an idea of God, so the Soul understands it perfectly.Time is a belief of the ego, so
the lower mind, which is the ego’s domain, accepts it without question.The only
aspect of time which is really eternal is now. That is what we really mean when
we say that “now is the only time.” The literal nature of this statement does not
mean anything to the ego, which interprets it at best to mean “don’t worry about
the future.” That is not what it really means at all.
38
The Holy Spirit is the Mediator between the interpretations of the ego and
the knowledge of the Soul. His ability to deal with symbols enables Him to
work against the ego’s beliefs in its own language. His equal ability to look beyond
symbols into eternity also enables Him to understand the laws of God, for which
He speaks. He can thus perform the function of reinterpreting what the ego makes,
not by destruction but by understanding. Understanding is light, and light leads to
knowledge. The Holy Spirit is in light because He is in you who are light, but
you yourselves do not know this. It is therefore the task of the Holy Spirit to
reinterpret you on behalf of God.
39
You cannot understand yourselves alone.This is because you have no meaning
apart from your rightful place in the Sonship and the rightful place of the Sonship
in God.This is your life, your eternity, and yourself. It is of this that the Holy Spirit
reminds you. It is this that the Holy Spirit sees.This vision invariably frightens the
ego because it is so calm. Peace is the ego’s greatest enemy because according to
its interpretation of reality, war is the guarantee of its survival. The ego becomes
strong in strife. If you believe there is strife, you will react viciously because the
idea of danger has entered your mind. The idea itself is an appeal to the ego.
40
The Holy Spirit is as vigilant as the ego to the call of danger, opposing it
with His strength, just as the ego welcomes it with all its might. The Holy Spirit
86
counters this welcome by welcoming peace. Peace and eternity are as closely
related as are time and war. Perception as well as knowledge derives meaning
from relationships. Those which you accept are the foundations of your beliefs.
The separation is merely another term for a split mind. It was not an act, but a
thought. Therefore, the idea of separation can be given away, just as the idea of
unity can. Either way, the idea will be strengthened in the mind of the giver.
41
The ego is the symbol of separation, just as the Holy Spirit is the symbol
of peace. What you perceive in others, you are strengthening in yourself. You let
your mind misperceive, but the Holy Spirit lets your mind reinterpret its own
misperceptions. The Holy Spirit is the perfect teacher. He uses only what your
minds already understand to teach you that you do not understand it. The Holy
Spirit can deal with an unwilling learner without going counter to his will because
part of his will is still for God. Despite the ego’s attempts to conceal this part, it is
still much stronger than the ego, even though the ego does not recognize it. The
Holy Spirit recognizes it perfectly because it is His own dwelling place or the
place in the mind where He is at home.
42
You are at home there, too, because it is a place of peace, and peace is of
God. You who are part of God are not at home except in His peace. If peace is
eternal, you are at home only in eternity. The ego made the world as it perceives
it, but the Holy Spirit, the reinterpreter of what the ego made, sees it only as a
teaching device for bringing you home. The Holy Spirit must perceive time and
reinterpret it into the timeless. The mind must be led into eternity through time
because, having made time, it is capable of perceiving its opposite.
43
The Holy Spirit must work through opposites because He must work with
and for a mind that is in opposition. Correct and learn and be open to learning.
You have not made truth, but truth can still set you free. Look as the Holy Spirit
looks, and understand as He understands. His understanding looks back to God
in remembrance of me. He is in Holy Communion always, and He is part of you.
He is your Guide to salvation because He holds the remembrance of things past
and to come. He holds this gladness gently in your minds, asking only that you
increase it in His name by sharing it, to increase His joy in you.
You must have noticed how often I have used your own ideas to help you.
You have learned to be a loving, wise, and very understanding therapist except for
yourself. That exception has given you more than perception for others because
of what you saw in them but less than knowledge of your real relationships to
44
87
them because you did not accept them as part of you. Understanding is beyond
perception because it introduces meaning. It is, however, below knowledge
even though it can grow towards it. It is possible, with great effort, to understand
someone else to some extent and to be quite helpful to him, but the effort is
misdirected. The misdirection is quite apparent; it is directed away from you.
45
This does not mean that it is lost to you, but it does mean that you are not
aware of it. I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you have
had. I have purified them of the errors which hid their light and have kept them
for you in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond
guilt. They came from the Holy Spirit within you, and we know what God
creates is eternal. What fear has hidden still is part of you.
46
Joining the Atonement, which I have repeatedly asked you to do, is always
a way out of fear. This does not mean that you can safely fail to acknowledge
anything that is true. However, the Holy Spirit will not fail to help you reinterpret
everything that you perceive as fearful and teach you that only what is loving is
true. Truth is beyond your ability to destroy but entirely within your grasp. It
belongs to you because you created it. It is yours because it is a part of you, just
as you are part of God because He created you.
47
The Atonement is the guarantee of the safety of the Kingdom. Nothing good
is lost because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the Voice for creation. Nothing
that is not good was ever created and therefore cannot be protected. What the ego
makes, it keeps to itself, and so it is without strength. Its unshared existence does
not die; it was merely never born. Real birth is not a beginning; it is a continuing.
Everything that can continue has been born, but it can increase as you are willing
to return the part of your mind that needs healing to the higher part and thus
render your creating undivided.
48
As a therapist, you yourself tell your patients that the real difference between
neurotic and “healthy” guilt feelings is that neurotic guilt feelings do not help
anyone. This distinction is wise though incomplete. Let us make the distinction
a little sharper now. Neurotic guilt feelings are a device of the ego for “atoning”
without sharing and for asking pardon without change.The ego never calls for real
Atonement and cannot tolerate forgiveness, which is change.
49
Your concept of “healthy guilt feelings” has merit, but without the concept
of the Atonement, it lacks the healing potential it holds.You made the distinction
in terms of feelings, which led to a decision not to repeat the error, which is only
part of healing.Your concept lacked the idea of undoing it. What you were really
advocating, then, was adopting a policy of sharing without a real foundation. I
88
have come to give you the foundation, so your own thoughts can make you really
free.You have carried the burden of the ideas you did not share and which were
therefore too weak to increase, but you did not recognize how to undo their
existence because you had made them.
50
You cannot cancel out your past errors alone. They will not disappear from
your mind without remedy. The remedy is not of your making, any more than
you are. The Atonement cannot be understood except as a pure act of sharing. That
is what is meant when we said it is possible even in this world to listen to one
voice. If you are part of God and the Sonship is one, you cannot be limited to the
“self ” the ego sees. Every loving thought held in any part of the Sonship belongs
to every part. It is shared because it is loving. Sharing is God’s way of creating and
also yours.Your ego can keep you in exile from the Kingdom, but in the Kingdom
itself it has no power.
51
You have become willing to receive my messages as I give them without
interference by the ego, so we can clarify an earlier point. We said that you will
one day teach as much as you learn and that will keep you in balance.The time is
now because you have let it be now.You cannot learn except by teaching.
52
I heard one voice because I had learned that learning is attained by teaching.
I understood that I could not atone for myself alone. Listening to one voice means
the will to share the voice in order to hear it yourself. The mind that was in me
is still irresistibly drawn to every mind created by God because God’s Wholeness
is the wholeness of His Son.
53
Turning the other cheek does not mean that you should submit to violence
without protest. It means that you cannot be hurt and do not want to show your
brother anything except your wholeness. Show him that he cannot hurt you and
hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. Teaching is done in
many ways: by formal means, by guidance, and above all by example. Teaching is
therapy because it means the sharing of ideas and the awareness that to share them
is to strengthen them. The union of the Sonship is its protection. The ego cannot
prevail against the Kingdom because it is united, and the ego fades away and is
undone in the presence of the attraction of the parts of the Sonship, which hear
the call of the Holy Spirit to be as One.
54
I cannot forget my need to teach what I have learned, which arose in me
because I learned it. I call upon you to teach what you have learned because by so
doing you can depend on it. Make it dependable in my name because my name
is the Name of God’s Son. What I learned I give you freely, and the mind which
was in me rejoices as you choose to hear it. The Holy Spirit atones in all of us
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vii. The Two
by undoing and thus lifts the burden you have placed in your mind. By following
Him, He leads you back to God where you belong, and how can you find this
way except by taking your brother with you?
55
My part in the Atonement is not complete until you join it and give it away.
As you teach, so shall you learn. I will never leave you or forsake you because
to forsake you would be to forsake myself and God who created me. You will
forsake yourselves and God if you forsake any of your brothers.You are more than
your brother’s keeper. In fact, you do not want to keep him.You must learn to see
him as he is and know that he belongs to God as you do. How could you treat
your brother better than by rendering unto God the things which are God’s?
56
Ideas do not leave the mind which thought them to have a separate being,
nor do separate thoughts conflict with one another in space because they do
not occupy space at all. However, human ideas can conflict in content because
they occur at different levels and include opposite thoughts at the same level. It is
impossible to share opposing thoughts. The Holy Spirit does not let you forsake your
brothers.Therefore, you can really share only the parts of your thoughts which are
of Him and which He also keeps for you. And of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.
All the rest remains with you until He has reinterpreted them in the light of
the Kingdom, making them, too, worthy of being shared. When they have been
sufficiently purified, He lets you give them away. The will to share them is their
purification.
57
The Atonement gives you the power of a healed mind, but the power to
create is of God.Therefore, those who have been forgiven must devote themselves
first to healing because having received the idea of healing, they must give it to
hold it. The full power of creation cannot be expressed as long as any of God’s
ideas withhold it from the Kingdom. The joint will of all the Sonship is the
only creator that can create like the Father because only the complete can think
completely, and the thinking of God lacks nothing. Everything you think that is
not through the Holy Spirit is lacking.
58
How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past except its beauty is gone,
and nothing is left except a blessing. You can indeed depart in peace because I
have loved you as I loved myself.You go with my blessing and for my blessing. Hold
it and share it, that it may always be ours. I place the peace of God in your heart
and in your hands, to hold and share. The heart is pure to hold it and the hands
are strong to give it. We cannot lose. My judgment is as strong as the wisdom of
God, in Whose Heart and Hands we have our being. His quiet Children are His
blessed Sons. The Thoughts of God are with you.
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vii. The Two
Decisions
Decisions
Perhaps some of our concepts will become clearer and more personally
meaningful if the ego’s use of guilt is clarified. The ego has a purpose, just as the
Holy Spirit has. The ego’s purpose is fear because only the fearful can be egotistic.
The ego’s logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit because your mind has
all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects. But again,
let us remember that both are in you. In Heaven there is no guilt because the
Kingdom is attained through the Atonement, which releases you to create. The
word “create” is appropriate here because, once what you have made is undone
by the Holy Spirit, the blessed residue is restored and therefore continues in
creation.
60
What is truly blessed is incapable of giving rise to guilt and must give rise
to joy. This makes it invulnerable to the ego because its peace is unassailable. It is
invulnerable to disruption because it is whole. Guilt is always disruptive. Anything
that engenders fear is divisive because it obeys the law of division. If the ego is the
symbol of the separation, it is also the symbol of guilt. Guilt is more than merely
not of God. It is the symbol of the attack on God. This is a totally meaningless
concept except to the ego, but do not underestimate the power of the ego’s belief
in it. This is the belief from which all guilt really stems.
61
The ego is the part of the mind which believes in division. How can part of
God detach itself without believing it is attacking Him? We spoke before of the
authority problem as involving the concept of usurping God’s power. The ego
believes that this is what you did because it believes it is you. It follows, then, that
if you identify with the ego, you must perceive yourself as guilty. Whenever you
respond to your ego, you will experience guilt and you will fear punishment. The
ego is quite literally a fearful thought.
62
However ridiculous the idea of attacking God may be to the sane mind,
never forget that the ego is not sane. It represents a delusional system, and it
speaks for it. Listening to the ego’s voice means that you believe it is possible to
attack God.You believe that a part of Him has been torn away by you.The classic
picture of fear of retaliation from without then follows because the severity of the
guilt is so acute that it must be projected. Although Freud was wrong about the
basic conflict itself, he was very accurate in describing its effects.
63
Whatever you accept into your mind has reality for you. It is, however, only
your acceptance of it that makes it real. If you enthrone the ego in it, the fact that
you have accepted it or allowed it to enter makes it your reality.This is because the
mind, as God created it, is capable of creating reality.We said before that you must
59
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viii. Time and
learn to think with God. To think with Him is to think like Him. This engenders
joy, not guilt, because it is natural. Guilt is a sure sign that your thinking is
unnatural. Perverted thinking will always be attended with guilt because it is the
belief in sin.
64
The ego does not perceive sin as a lack of love. It perceives sin as a positive act
of assault.This is an interpretation which is necessary to the ego’s survival because
as soon as you regard sin as a lack you will automatically attempt to remedy the
situation. And you will succeed. The ego regards this as doom, but you must
learn to regard it as freedom. The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals
the body because it has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness
because it cannot conceive of attacking anyone or anything.
65
We said before that illness is a form of magic. It might be better to say that
it is a form of magical solution. The ego believes that by punishing itself it will
mitigate the punishment of God. Yet even in this it is arrogant. It attributes to
God a punishing intent, and then takes over this intent as its own prerogative. It
tries to usurp all the functions of God as it perceives them because it recognizes
that only total allegiance can be trusted.
66
The ego cannot oppose the laws of God any more than you can, but it can
interpret them according to what it wants, just as you can.That is why the question,
“What do you want?” must be answered. You are answering it every minute and
every second, and each moment of decision is a judgment which is anything but
ineffectual. Its effects will follow automatically until the decision is changed. This is
repeated here because you have not learned it. But again, your decision can be
unmade as well as made. Remember, though, that the alternatives are unalterable.
67
The Holy Spirit, like the ego, is a decision. Together they constitute all the
alternatives which the mind can accept and obey. The ego and the Holy Spirit
are the only choices open to you. God created one, and so you cannot eradicate
it. You made the other, and so you can. Only what God creates is irreversible and
unchangeable.What you have made can always be changed because when you do
not think like God you are not really thinking at all. Delusional ideas are not real
thoughts, although you can believe in them. But you are wrong. The function of
thought comes from God and is in God. As part of His Thought, you cannot think
apart from Him.
68
Irrational thought is a thought disorder. God Himself orders your thought
because your thought was created by Him. Guilt feelings are always a sign that
you do not know this. They also show that you believe you can think apart from
God and want to. Every thought disorder is attended by guilt at its inception and
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Eternity
maintained by guilt in its continuance. Guilt is inescapable for those who believe
they order their own thought and must therefore obey its orders. This makes
them feel responsible for their mind errors, without recognizing that by accepting
this responsibility they are really reacting irresponsibly. If the sole responsibility of
the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself, and I assure you that
it is, then the responsibility for what is atoned for cannot be yours.
69
The dilemma cannot be resolved except by accepting the solution of undoing.
You would be responsible for the effects of all your wrong thinking if it could
not be undone. The purpose of the Atonement is to save the past in purified
form only. If you accept the remedy for a thought disorder, and a remedy whose
efficacy is beyond doubt, how can its symptoms remain? You have reason to
question the validity of symptom cure, but no one believes that the symptoms can
remain if the underlying cause is removed.
viii. Time and
Eternity
The continuing will to remain separated is the only possible reason for
continuing guilt feelings. We have said this before, but we did not emphasize the
destructive results of this decision at that time. Any decision of the mind will affect
both behavior and experience. What you will, you expect. This is not delusional.
Your mind does create your future, and it can turn it back to full creation at any
minute if it accepts the Atonement first. It will also turn back to full creation the
instant it has done so. Having given up its thought disorder, the proper ordering
of thought becomes quite apparent.
71
God in His knowledge is not waiting, but His Kingdom is bereft while you
wait. All the Sons of God are waiting for your return, just as you are waiting for
theirs. Delay does not matter in eternity, but it is tragic in time.You have elected
to be in time rather than eternity and have therefore changed your belief in your
status.Yet your election is both free and alterable.You do not belong in time.Your
place is only in eternity, where God Himself placed you forever.
72
Guilt feelings are the preservers of time.They induce fears of future retaliation
or abandonment and thus ensure that the future will remain like the past. This is
the ego’s continuity and gives it a false sense of security through the belief that
you cannot escape from it. But you can and must. God offers you the continuity
of eternity in exchange. When you choose to make this exchange, you will
simultaneously exchange guilt for joy, viciousness for love, and pain for peace.
My role is only to unchain your will and make it free. Your ego cannot accept
70
93
this freedom and will oppose your free decision at every possible moment and in
every possible way. And as its maker, you recognize what it can do because you
gave it the power to do it.
73
The mind does indeed know its power because the mind does indeed know
God. Remember the Kingdom always, and remember that you who are part of
the Kingdom cannot be lost. The mind that was in me is in you, for God creates
with perfect fairness. Let the Holy Spirit remind you always of His fairness, and
let me teach you how to share it with your brothers. How else can the chance
to claim it for yourself be given you? What you do not understand is that the
two voices speak for different interpretations of the same thing simultaneously,
or almost simultaneously, for the ego always speaks first. Alternate interpretations
were unnecessary until the first one was made, and speaking itself was unnecessary
before the ego was made.
74
The ego speaks in judgment and the Holy Spirit reverses its decisions, much
as the Supreme Court has the power to reverse the lower courts’ decisions about
the laws of this world. The ego’s decisions are always wrong because they are
based on a complete fallacy which they were made to uphold. Nothing the ego
perceives is interpreted correctly. Not only does it cite Scripture for its purpose,
but it even interprets Scripture as a witness for itself. The Bible is a fearful thing
to the ego because of its prejudiced judgment. Perceiving it as fearful, it interprets
it fearfully. Having made you afraid, you do not appeal to the Higher Court
because you believe its judgment would be against you.
75
We need cite only a few examples to see how the ego’s interpretations have
misled you. A favorite ego quotation is “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” Another is
“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.” Still another is “I will visit the sins of the
father unto the third and fourth generation,” and also “The wicked shall perish.”
There are many others, but if you will let the Holy Spirit reinterpret these in His
own light, they will suffice.
76
“As ye sow, so shall ye reap” merely means that what you believe to be worth
cultivating you will cultivate in yourself.Your judgment of what is worthy makes
it worthy for you. “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord” is easily explained if
you remember that ideas increase only be being shared. This quotation therefore
emphasizes the fact that vengeance cannot be shared. Give it therefore to the Holy
Spirit, who will undo it in you because it does not belong in your mind, which
is part of God.
77
“I will visit the sins of the fathers unto the third and fourth generation,”
as interpreted by the ego, is particularly vicious. It is used, in fact, as an attempt
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viii. Time and
Eternity
to guarantee its survival beyond itself. Actually, all the quotation means is that
the Holy Spirit in later generations retains the power to interpret correctly what
former generations have thought and thus release their thoughts from the ability
to produce fear anywhere in the Sonship. “The wicked shall perish” is merely
a statement of fact if the word “perish” is properly understood. Every loveless
thought must be undone. Even the word “undone” is fearful to the ego, which
interprets “I am undone” as “I am destroyed.”
78
The ego will not be destroyed because it is part of your thought, but because
it is uncreative and therefore unsharing, it will be reinterpreted entirely to release
you from fear. The part of your thought which you have given to the ego will
merely return to the Kingdom, where your whole mind belongs.The ego is a form
of arrest, but arrest is merely delay. It does not involve the concept of punishment,
although the ego welcomes that interpretation.You can delay the completion of
the Kingdom, but you cannot introduce the concept of assault into it.
79
When I said, “I am come as a light into the world,” I surely came to share the
light with you. Remember the symbolic reference we made before to the ego’s
dark glass, and remember also that we said, “Do not look there.” It is still true
that “where you look to find yourself is up to you.” The Higher Court will not
condemn you. It will merely dismiss the case against you. There can be no case
against a Child of God, and every witness to guilt in God’s creations is bearing
false witness to God Himself.
80
Appeal everything you believe gladly to God’s own Higher Court because
it speaks for Him and therefore speaks truly. It will dismiss the case against you,
however carefully you have built it. The case may be foolproof, but it is not Godproof.The Voice for God will not hear it at all because He can only witness truly.
His verdict will always be “Thine is the Kingdom” because He was given you to
remind you of what you are.
81
Your patience with each other is your patience with yourselves. Is not a
Child of God worth patience? I have shown you infinite patience because my will
is that of our Father, from Whom I learned of infinite patience. His Voice was in
me as it is in you, speaking for patience towards the Sonship in the name of its
Creator. What you need to learn now is that only infinite patience can produce
immediate effects.This is the way in which time is exchanged for eternity. Infinite
patience calls upon infinite love, and by producing results now, it renders time
unnecessary.
82
To say that time is temporary is merely redundant. We have repeatedly said
that time is a learning device which will be abolished when it is no longer
95
ix. The
useful. The Holy Spirit, Who speaks for God in time, also knows that time is
meaningless. He reminds you of this in every passing moment of time because it
is His special function to return you to eternity and remain to bless your creations
there. He is the only blessing you can truly give because He is so truly blessed,
and because He has been given you so freely by God, you must give Him as you
received Him.
ix. The
Eternal Fixation
The idea of “set” is among the better psychological concepts. Actually, it is
used quite frequently in the Bible and also in this course under many different
terms. For example, “God will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed
(or set) on Him,” a statement which means that God’s peace is set in the Holy
Spirit because it is fixed on God. It is also fixed in you.You, then, are fixed in the
peace of God. The concept of “fixation” is also a very helpful one which Freud
understood perfectly. Unfortunately, he lost his understanding because he was
afraid and, as you know all too well, fear is incompatible with good judgment.
Fear distorts thinking and therefore disorders thought.
84
Freud’s system of thought was extremely ingenious because Freud was
extremely ingenious, and a mind must endow its thoughts with its own attributes.
This is its inherent strength, although it may misuse its power. Freud lost much of
the potential value of his thought system because he did not include himself in it.
This is a dissociated state because the thinker cuts himself off from his thoughts.
Freud’s thought was so conflicted that he could not have retained his sanity as he
saw it without dissociation. That is why the many contradictions which are quite
apparent in his thinking became increasingly less apparent to him. A man who
knows what fixation really means and yet does not yield to it is terribly afraid.
85
Fixation is the pull of God, on whom your mind is fixed because of the Holy
Spirit’s irrevocable set. “Irrevocable” means “cannot be called back or redirected.”
The irrevocable nature of the Holy Spirit’s set is the basis for His unequivocal
Voice. The Holy Spirit never changes His mind. Clarity of thought cannot occur
under conditions of vacillation. Unless a mind is fixed in its purpose, it is not clear.
Clarity literally means the state of light, and enlightenment is understanding.
Enlightenment stands under perception because you have denied it as the real
foundation of thought. This is the basis for all delusional systems.
86
The concept of fixation as Freud saw it has a number of learning advantages.
First, it recognizes that man can be fixated at a point in development which does
not accord with a point in time. This clearly could have been a means toward real
83
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Eternal Fixation
release from the time belief, had Freud pursued it with an open mind. Freud,
however, suffered all his life from refusal to allow eternity to dawn upon his mind
and enlighten it truly. As a result, he overlooked now entirely and merely saw the
continuity of past and future.
87
Second, although Freud misinterpreted what the Holy Spirit told him, or
better, reminded him of, he was too honest to deny more than was necessary
to keep his fear in tolerable bounds as he perceived the situation. Therefore, he
emphasized that the point in development at which the mind is fixated is more
real to itself than the external reality with which it disagrees. This again could
have been a powerful release mechanism had Freud not decided to involve it in a
strong defense system because he perceived it as an attack.
88
Third, although Freud interpreted fixation as involving irrevocable “danger
points” to which the mind could always regress, the concept can also be
interpreted as an irrevocable call to sanity which the mind cannot lose. Freud
himself could not accept this interpretation, but throughout his thought system,
the “threat” of fixation remained and could never be eliminated by any living
human being. Essentially, this was the basis of Freud’s pessimism, personally as
well as theoretically. He tried every means his very inventive mind could devise
to set up a form of therapy which could enable the mind to escape from fixation
forever, even though he knew this was impossible.
89
This knowledge plagued Freud’s belief in his own thought system at every
turn because he was both an honest man and a healer. He was therefore only
partially insane and was unable to relinquish the hope of release even though he
could not cope with it. The reason for this amount of detail is because you are
in the same position. You were eternally fixated on God in your creation, and
the pull of this fixation is so strong that you will never overcome it. The reason
is perfectly clear. The fixation is on a level so high that it cannot be surmounted.
You are always being pulled back to your Creator because you belong to Him.
90
Do you really believe you can make a voice that can drown out His? Do
you really believe that you can devise a thought system which can separate you
from His? Do you really believe that you can plan for your safety and joy better
than He can? You need be neither careful nor careless; you need merely cast your
cares upon Him because He careth for you. You are His care because He loves
you. His Voice reminds you always that all hope is yours because of His care. You
cannot choose to escape His care because that is not His Will, but you can choose
to accept His care and use the infinite power of His care for all those He created
by it.
97
ix. The
There have been many healers who did not heal themselves. They have not
moved mountains by their faith because their faith was not whole. Some of them
have healed the sick at times, but they have not raised the dead. Unless the healer
heals himself, he does not believe that there is no order of difficulty in miracles. He
has not learned that every mind God created is equally worthy of being healed
because God created it whole.You are merely asked to return to God the mind as He
created it. He asks you only for what He gave, knowing that this giving will heal
you. Sanity is wholeness, and the sanity of your brothers is yours.
92
Why should you listen to the endless insane calls which you think are made
upon you when you know the Voice of God Himself is in you? God commended
His Spirit to you and asks that you commend yours to Him. He wills to keep it
in perfect peace because you are of one mind and spirit with Him. Excluding
yourself from the Atonement is the ego’s last-ditch defense of its own existence.
It reflects both the ego’s need to separate and your willingness to side with its
separateness. This willingness means that you do not want to be healed.
93
But the time is now.You have not been asked to work out the plan of salvation
yourselves because, as I told you before, the remedy is not of your making. God
Himself gave you the perfect correction for everything you have made which is
not in accord with His holy Will. I have made His plan perfectly explicit to you
and have also told you of your part in His plan and how urgent it is that you fulfill
it. There is time for delay, but there need not be. God weeps at the “sacrifice” of
His Children, who believe they are lost to Him.
94
I have already told you that whenever you are not wholly joyous it is because
you have reacted with a lack of love to some Soul which God created. Perceiving
this as “sin,” you become defensive because you expect attack.The decision to react
in this way, however, is yours and can therefore be undone. It cannot be undone by
repentance in the usual sense because this implies guilt. If you allow yourself to
feel guilty, you will reinforce the error rather than allow it to be undone for you.
95
Decisions cannot be difficult. This is obvious if you realize that you must already
have made a decision not to be wholly joyous if that is how you feel. Therefore,
the first step in the undoing is to recognize that you actively decided wrongly but
can as actively decide otherwise. Be very firm with yourselves in this, and keep yourselves fully aware of the fact that the undoing process, which does not come from
you, is nevertheless within you because God placed it there. Your part is merely to
return your thinking to the point at which the error was made and give it over to
the Atonement in peace. Say to yourselves the following as sincerely as you can,
remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation:
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Eternal Fixation
I must have decided wrongly because I am not at peace.
I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.
I will to decide otherwise because I want to be at peace.
I do not feel guilty because the Holy Spirit will undo
all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.
I will to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for Me.
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ii. The
ii. The
Message
of the
Message of the Crucifixion
Crucifixion
For teaching purposes, let us consider the crucifixion again. We have not
dwelt on it before because of its fearful connotations. The only emphasis we
laid upon it was that it was not a form of punishment. Nothing, however, can be
really explained in negative terms only. There is a positive interpretation of the
crucifixion which is wholly devoid of fear and therefore wholly benign in what
it teaches if it is properly understood. The crucifixion is nothing more than an
extreme example. Its value, like the value of any teaching device, lies solely in the
kind of learning it facilitates. It can be and has been misunderstood. This is only
because the fearful are apt to perceive fearfully.
5
I have already told you that you can always call on me to share my decision
and thus make it stronger. I also told you that the crucifixion was the last foolish
journey that the Sonship need take and that it should mean release from fear to
anyone who understands it. While we emphasized only the resurrection before,
the purpose of the crucifixion and how it actually led to the resurrection was not
clarified at that time. Nevertheless, it has a definite contribution to make to your
own lives, and if you will consider it without fear, it will help you understand your
own role as teachers.
6
You have reacted for years as if you were being crucified. This is a marked
tendency of the separated ones, who always refuse to consider what they have done
to themselves. Projection means anger, anger fosters assault, and assault promotes
fear.The real meaning of the crucifixion lies in the apparent intensity of the assault
of some of the Sons of God upon another.This, of course, is impossible and must
be fully understood as an impossibility. In fact unless it is fully understood as only
that, I cannot serve as a real model for learning.
7
Assault can ultimately be made only on the body. There is little doubt that
one body can assault another and can even destroy it. Yet if destruction itself
is impossible, then anything that is destructible cannot be real. Therefore, its
destruction does not justify anger.To the extent to which you believe that it does,
you must be accepting false premises and teaching them to others.The message which
the crucifixion was intended to teach was that it is not necessary to perceive any
form of assault in persecution because you cannot be persecuted. If you respond
with anger, you must be equating yourself with the destructible and are therefore
regarding yourself insanely.
8
I have made it perfectly clear that I am like you and you are like me, but our
fundamental equality can be demonstrated only through joint decision.You are free
to perceive yourselves as persecuted if you choose.You might remember, however,
4
si x
Attack and Fear
i.
T
Introduction
he relationship of anger to attack is obvious, but the inevitable association
of anger and fear is not always so clear. Anger always involves projection of
separation, which must ultimately be accepted as entirely one’s own responsibility.
Anger cannot occur unless you believe that you have been attacked, that your
attack was justified, and that you are in no way responsible. Given these three
wholly irrational premises, the equally irrational conclusion that a brother is
worthy of attack rather than of love follows. What can be expected from insane
premises except an insane conclusion?
6:2
The way to undo an insane conclusion is to consider the sanity of the
premises on which it rests.You cannot be attacked; attack has no justification; and
you are responsible for what you believe.You have been asked to take me as your
model for learning since an extreme example is a particularly helpful learning
device. Everyone teaches and teaches all the time. This is a responsibility which
he inevitably assumes the moment he accepts any premise at all, and no one can
organize his life without any thought system. Once he has developed a thought
system of any kind, he lives by it and teaches it.
3
You have been chosen to teach the Atonement precisely because you have
been extreme examples of allegiance to your thought systems and therefore have
developed the capacity for allegiance. It has indeed been misplaced, but it is a form
of faith which you yourselves have been willing to redirect.You cannot doubt the
strength of your devotion when you consider how faithfully you have observed
it. It was quite evident that you had already developed the ability to follow a
better model if you could accept it.
100
101
ii. The
Chapter 6: ATTACK AND FEAR
when you do choose to react that way, that I was persecuted as the world judges
and did not share this evaluation for myself. And because I did not share it, I did not
strengthen it. I therefore offered a different interpretation of attack and one which I
do want to share with you. If you will believe it, you will help me to teach it.
9
We have said before, “As you teach so shall you learn.” If you react as if you
are persecuted, you are teaching persecution.This is not a lesson which the Sons of
God should want to teach if they are to realize their own salvation. Rather, teach
you own perfect immunity, which is the truth in you, and know that it cannot be
assailed. Do not protect it yourselves, or you have believed that it is assailable.You
are not asked to be crucified, which was part of my own teaching contribution.
You are merely asked to follow my example in the face of much less extreme
temptations to misperceive and not to accept them falsely as justifications for
anger.
10
There can be no justification for the unjustifiable. Do not believe there is, and
do not teach that there is. Remember always that what you believe you will teach.
Believe with me, and we will become equal as teachers. Your resurrection is your
reawakening. I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning
on your minds of what is already in them. God placed it there Himself, and so it
is true forever. I believed in it and therefore made it forever true for me. Help me
to teach it to our brothers in the name of the Kingdom of God, but first believe
that it is true for you, or you will teach amiss.
11
My brothers slept during the so-called “agony” in the garden, but I could
not be angry with them because I had learned I could not be abandoned. Peter
swore he would never deny me, but he did so three times. He did offer to defend
me with the sword, which I naturally refused, not being at all in need of bodily
protection. I am sorry when my brothers do not share my decision to hear only
one voice because it weakens them as teachers and as learners. Yet I know that
they cannot really betray themselves or me and that it is still on them that I must
build my church.
12
There is no choice in this because only you can be the foundation of God’s
church. A church is where an altar is, and the presence of the altar is what makes
it a church. Any church which does not inspire love has a hidden altar which is
not serving the purpose for which God intended it. I must found His church on
you because you who accept me as a model are literally my disciples. Disciples
are followers, but if the model they follow has chosen to save them pain in all
respects, they are probably unwise not to follow him.
13
I elected both for your sake and mine to demonstrate that the most outrageous
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Message of the Crucifixion
assault as judged by the ego did not matter. As the world judges these things,
but not as God knows them, I was betrayed, abandoned, beaten, torn, and finally
killed. It was perfectly clear that this was only because of the projection of others
because I had not harmed anyone and had healed many. We are still equal as
learners, even though we need not have equal experiences. The Holy Spirit is
glad when you can learn enough from mine to be re-awakened by them. That
was their only purpose, and that is the only way in which I can be perceived as
the Way, the Truth, and the Light.
14
When you hear only one voice you are never called on to sacrifice. On the
contrary, by enabling yourselves to hear the Holy Spirit in others, you can learn
from their experiences and gain from them without experiencing them yourselves.
That is because the Holy Spirit is one, and anyone who listens is inevitably led to
demonstrate His way for all.You are not persecuted, nor was I.You are not asked
to repeat my experiences because the Holy Spirit, Whom we share, makes this
unnecessary. To use my experiences constructively, however, you must still follow
my example in how to perceive them.
15
My brothers and yours are constantly engaged in justifying the unjustifiable.
My one lesson, which I must teach as I learned, is that no perception which is out
of accord with the judgment of the Holy Spirit can be justified. I undertook to
show this was true in a very extreme case merely because it would serve as a good
teaching aid to those whose temptations to give in to anger and assault would not
be so extreme. I will with God that none of His Sons should suffer.
16
Remember that the Holy Spirit is the communication link between God the
Father and His separated Sons. If you will listen to His Voice, you will know that
you cannot either hurt or be hurt and that many need your blessing to help them
hear this for themselves. When you perceive only this need in them and do not
respond to any other, you will have learned of me and will be as eager to share
your learning as I am.The crucifixion cannot be shared because it is the symbol of
projection, but the resurrection is the symbol of sharing because the reawakening
of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its wholeness.
Only this is knowledge.
17
The message of the crucifixion is perfectly clear:
18
Teach only love, for that is what you are.
If you interpret the crucifixion in any other way, you are using it as a
weapon for assault rather than as the call for peace for which it was intended.
The Apostles often misunderstood it and always for the same reason that makes
19
103
iii. The
anyone misunderstand anything.Their own imperfect love made them vulnerable
to projection, and out of their own fear they spoke of the “wrath of God” as His
retaliatory weapon. Nor could they speak of the crucifixion entirely without
anger because their own sense of guilt had made them angry.
20
There are two glaring examples of upside-down thinking in the New
Testament, whose whole gospel is only the message of love.These are not like the
several slips into impatience which I made. I had learned the Atonement prayer,
which I also came to teach, too well to engage in upside-down thinking myself.
If the Apostles had not felt guilty, they never could have quoted me as saying,
“I come not to bring peace but a sword.” This is clearly the exact opposite of
everything I taught.
21
Nor could they have described my reactions to Judas as they did if they had
really understood me. They would have realized I could not have said, “Betrayest
thou the Son of Man with a kiss?” unless I believed in betrayal.The whole message
of the crucifixion was simply that I did not. The “punishment” which I am said to
have called forth upon Judas was a similar reversal. Judas was my brother and a Son
of God, as much a part of the Sonship as myself.Was it likely that I would condemn
him when I was ready to demonstrate that condemnation is impossible?
22
I am very grateful to the Apostles for their teaching and fully aware of
the extent of their devotion to me. Nevertheless, as you read their teachings,
remember that I told them myself that there was much they would understand
later because they were not wholly ready to follow me at the time. I emphasize
this only because I do not want you to allow any fear to enter into the thought
system toward which I am guiding you. I do not call for martyrs but for teachers.
No one is “punished” for sins, and the Sons of God are not sinners.
23
Any concept of “punishment” involves the projection of blame and reinforces
the idea that blame is justified. The behavior that results is a lesson in blame, just as
all behavior teaches the beliefs which motivate it.The crucifixion was a complex
of behaviors arising out of clearly opposed thought systems. As such, it was the
perfect symbol of conflict between the ego and the Son of God. The conflict is
just as real now, and its lessons, too, have equal reality when they are learned. I do
not need gratitude any more than I needed protection, but you need to develop
your weakened ability to be grateful, or you cannot appreciate God. He does not
need your appreciation, but you do.
24
You cannot love what you do not appreciate, and fear makes appreciation
impossible.Whenever you are afraid of what you are, you do not appreciate it and will
therefore reject it. As a result, you will teach rejection. The power of the Sons of God
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Uses of Projection
is operating all the time because they were created as creators. Their influence on
each other is without limit and must be used for their joint salvation. Each one must
learn to teach that all forms of rejection are utterly meaningless. The separation is
the notion of rejection. As long as you teach this, you still believe it. This is not as
God thinks, and you must think as He thinks if you are to know Him again.
iii. The
Uses
of
Projection
Any split in will must involve a rejection of part of it, and this is the belief
in separation. The wholeness of God, which is His peace, cannot be appreciated
except by a whole mind which recognizes the wholeness of God’s creation and by
this recognition knows its Creator. Exclusion and separation are synonymous, as
are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and
is dissociation and also that, once it had occurred, projection became its main
defense or the device that keeps it going. The reason, however, may not be as clear
as you think.
26
In the ego’s use of projection, to which we are obviously referring, what you
project you disown and therefore do not believe is yours.You are excluding yourself
by the very statement you are making that you are different from the one on whom
you project. Since you have also judged against what you project, you continue
to attack it because you have already attacked it by projecting it. By doing this
unconsciously, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself first
out of awareness and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe.
27
Projection will always hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split
mind, and its only purpose is to keep the separation going. It is solely a device of the
ego to make you feel different from your brothers and separated from them. The
ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem “better”
than they are, thus obscuring your equality with them still further. Projection
and attack are inevitably related because projection is always a means of justifying
attack. Anger without projection is impossible.
28
The ego uses projection only to distort your perception both of yourself
and your brothers. The process begins by excluding something that exists in you
which you do not want and leads directly to excluding you from your brothers.
We have learned, however, that there is another use of projection. Every ability
of the ego has a better counterpart because its abilities are directed by the mind
which has a better Voice. The Holy Spirit as well as the ego utilizes projection,
but since their goals are opposed so is the result.
25
105
The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving you as perfect. Knowing this perfection
is shared, He recognizes it in others, thus strengthening it in both. Instead of
anger, this arouses love for both because it establishes inclusion. Perceiving equality,
the Holy Spirit perceives equal needs. This invites Atonement automatically
because Atonement is the one need which in this world is universal. To perceive
yourself this way is the only way in which you can find happiness in the world.
That is because it is the acknowledgment that you are not in this world, for the
world is unhappy.
30
How else can you find joy in a joyless place except by realizing that you are not
there? You cannot be anywhere that God did not put you, and God created you as
part of Him.That is both where you are and what you are. It is completely unalterable.
It is total inclusion.You cannot change it now or ever. It is forever true. It is not a
belief but a fact. Anything that God created is as true as He is. Its truth lies only in its
perfect inclusion in Him, Who alone is perfect. To deny this in any way is to deny
yourself and Him since it is impossible to accept one without the other.
31
The perfect equality of the Holy Spirit’s perception is the counterpart of the
perfect equality of God’s knowing. The ego’s perception has no counterpart in
God, but the Holy Spirit remains the bridge between perception and knowledge.
By enabling you to use perception in a way that parallels knowledge, you will
ultimately meet it and know it. The ego would prefer to believe that this meeting
is impossible, yet it is your perception which the Holy Spirit guides. You might
remember that the human eye perceives parallel lines as if they meet in the
distance, which is the same as in the future if time and space are one dimension.
Your perception will end where it began. Everything meets in God because
everything was created by Him and in Him.
32
God created His Sons by extending His thought and retaining the extensions
of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within
themselves and with each other because they were created neither partially nor in
part.The Holy Spirit enables you to perceive this wholeness now.You can no more pray
for yourselves alone than you can find joy for yourself alone. Prayer is the restatement
of inclusion, directed by the Holy Spirit under the laws of God. God created you to
create.You cannot extend His Kingdom until you know of its wholeness.
33
Thoughts begin in the mind of the thinker from which they reach outward.
This is as true of God’s Thinking as it is of yours. Because your minds are split,
you can also perceive as well as think.Yet perception cannot escape from the basic
laws of mind.You perceive from your mind and extend your perceptions outward.
Although perception of any kind is unnecessary, you made it, and the Holy Spirit
29
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iii. The
Uses of Projection
can therefore use it well. He can inspire perception and lead it toward God by
making it parallel to God’s way of thinking and thus guarantee their ultimate
meeting. This convergence seems to be far in the future only because your mind
is not in perfect alignment with the idea and therefore does not want it now.
34
The Holy Spirit uses time but does not believe in it. Coming from God, He
uses everything for good, but He does not believe in what is not true. Since the
Holy Spirit is in your minds, your minds must also be able to believe only what is
true. The Holy Spirit can speak only for this because he speaks for God. He tells
you to return your whole mind to God because it has never left Him. If it has never
left Him, you need only perceive it as it is to be returned.The full awareness of the
Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation never occurred. The ego cannot
prevail against this because it is an explicit statement that the ego never occurred.
35
The ego can accept the idea that return is necessary because it can so easily
make the idea seem so difficult. Yet the Holy Spirit tells you that even return is
unnecessary because what never happened cannot involve any problem. It does
not follow, however, that you cannot make the idea of return necessary and difficult.
It is surely clear, however, that the perfect need nothing and cannot experience
perfection as a difficult accomplishment because that is what they are.
36
This is the way in which you must perceive God’s creations, bringing all of
your perceptions into the one parallel line which the Holy Spirit sees. This line
is the direct line of communication with God and lets your mind converge with
His. There is no conflict anywhere in this perception because it means that all
perception is guided by the Holy Spirit, Whose mind is fixed on God. Only the
Holy Spirit can resolve conflict because only the Holy Spirit is conflict-free. He
perceives only what is true in your mind and extends outward only to what is true
in other minds.
37
The difference between the ego’s use of projection and projection as the Holy
Spirit uses it is very simple. The ego projects to exclude and therefore to deceive.
The Holy Spirit projects by recognizing Himself in every mind and thus perceives
them as one. Nothing conflicts in this perception because what the Holy Spirit
perceives is the same. Wherever He looks He sees Himself, and because He is
united, He offers the whole Kingdom always. This is the one message God gave
to Him and for which He must speak because that is what He is. The peace of
God lies in that message, and so the peace of God lies in you.
38
The great peace of the Kingdom shines in your mind forever, but it must
shine outward to make you aware of it.The Holy Spirit was given you with perfect
impartiality and only by perceiving Him impartially can you perceive Him at all.
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v. The
The ego is legion, but the Holy Spirit is One. No darkness abides anywhere in
the Kingdom, but your part is only to allow no darkness to abide in your own
mind. This alignment with light is unlimited because it is in alignment with the
light of the world. Each of us is the light of the world, and by joining our minds
in this light, we proclaim the Kingdom of God together and as one.
iv. The
Relinquishment
of
Attack
We have used many words as synonymous which are not ordinarily regarded
as the same. We began with having and being and more recently have used others.
Hearing and being are examples, to which we can also add teaching and being,
learning and being and, above all, projecting and being. This is because, as we have
said before, every idea begins in the mind of the thinker and extends outward.
Therefore, what extends from the mind is still in it, and from what it extends it
knows itself. That is its natural talent. The word “knows” is correct here, even
though the ego does not know and is not concerned with being at all.
40
The Holy Spirit still holds knowledge safe through His impartial perception.
By attacking nothing, He presents no barrier at all to the communication of God.
Thus, being is never threatened. Your Godlike mind can never be defiled. The
ego never was and never will be part of it, but through the ego you can hear and
teach and learn what is not true. From this, which you have made, you have taught
yourselves to believe that you are not what you are. You cannot teach what you
have not learned, and what you teach you strengthen in yourselves because you
are sharing it. Every lesson you teach you are learning.
41
That is why you must teach only one lesson. If you are to be conflict-free
yourselves, you must learn only from the Holy Spirit and teach only by Him.You
are only love, but when you denied this you made what you are something you
must learn. We said before that the message of the crucifixion was, “Teach only
love, for that is what you are.” This is the one lesson which is perfectly unified
because it is the only lesson which is one. Only by teaching it can you learn it.“As
you teach, so will you learn.” If that is true, and it is true indeed, you must never
forget that what you teach is teaching you. What you project you believe.
42
The only real safety lies in projecting only the Holy Spirit because, as you see
His gentleness in others, your own mind perceives itself as totally harmless. Once it
can accept this fully, it does not see the need to protect itself. The protection of God
then dawns upon it, assuring it that it is perfectly safe forever.The perfectly safe are
wholly benign. They bless because they know they are blessed. Without anxiety
the mind is wholly kind and because it projects beneficence, it is beneficent.
39
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Only Answer
Safety is the complete relinquishment of attack. No compromise is possible in
this. Teach attack in any form, and you have learned it, and it will hurt you. Yet your
learning is not immortal, and you can unlearn it by not teaching it. Since you
cannot not teach, your salvation lies in teaching the exact opposite of everything
the ego believes. This is how you will learn the truth that will set you free and
keep you so, as others learn it of you. The only way to have peace is to teach peace.
By learning it through projection it becomes a part of what you know because
you cannot teach what you have dissociated.
44
Only thus can you win back the knowledge that you threw away. An idea
which you share you must have. It awakens in you through the conviction of
teaching. Remember that, if teaching is being and learning is being, teaching is
learning. Everything you teach you are learning. Teach only love, and learn that
love is yours, and you are love.
43
v. The
Only Answer
Remember that the Holy Spirit is the Answer, not the question. The ego
always speaks first because it is capricious and does not mean its maker well. That
is because it believes, and correctly, that its maker may withdraw his support from
it at any moment. If it meant you well, it would be glad, as the Holy Spirit will
be glad when He has brought you home and you no longer need His guidance.
The ego does not regard itself as part of you. Herein lies its primary perceptual
error, the foundation of its whole thought system.
46
When God created you, He made you part of Him.That is why attack within
the Kingdom is impossible. You made the ego without love, and so it does not
love you. You could not remain within the Kingdom without love and since the
Kingdom is love, you believe that you are without it. This enables the ego to
regard itself as separate and outside its maker, thus speaking for the part of your
mind that believes you are separate and outside the Mind of God. The ego, then,
raised the first question that was ever asked, but one which it can never answer.
That question, “What are you?” was the beginning of doubt.
47
The ego has never answered any questions since, although it has raised a
great many. The most inventive activities of the ego have never done more than
obscure the question because you have the answer and the ego is afraid of you. You
cannot understand the conflict until you fully understand one basic fact that the
ego does not know. The Holy Spirit does not speak first, but He always answers.
Everyone has called upon Him for help at one time or another and in one way
or another and has been answered. Since the Holy Spirit answers truly, He answers
45
109
for all time, which means that everyone has the answer now.
48
The ego cannot hear the Holy Spirit, but it does believe that part of the same
mind that made it is against it. It interprets this as a justification for attacking its
maker. It believes that the best defense is attack and wants you to believe it. Unless
you do believe it you will not side with it, and the ego feels badly in need of
allies though not of brothers. Perceiving something alien to itself in your mind,
the ego turns to the body, not the mind, as its ally because the body is not part
of you. This makes the body the ego’s friend. It is an alliance frankly based on
separation. If you side with this alliance, you will be afraid because you are siding
with an alliance of fear.
49
The ego and the body conspire against your minds, and because the ego
realizes that its “enemy” can end them both merely by knowing they are not part
of him, they join in the attack together. This is perhaps the strangest perception
of all if you consider what it really involves. The ego, which is not real, attempts
to persuade the mind, which is real, that the mind is its own learning device and
that the learning device is more real than it is. No one in his right mind could
possibly believe this, and no one in his right mind does believe it.
50
Hear then the one answer of the Holy Spirit to all the questions which the ego
raises.You are a Child of God, a priceless part of His Kingdom, which He created
as part of Him. Nothing else exists, and only this is real.You have chosen a sleep
in which you have had bad dreams, but the sleep is not real, and God calls you to
awake.There will be nothing left of your dream when you hear Him because you
will be awake. Your dreams have contained many of the ego’s symbols, and they
have confused you. Yet that was only because you were asleep and did not know.
When you awake, you will see the truth around you and in you, and you will no
longer believe in dreams because they will have no reality for you.
51
Yet the Kingdom and all that you have created there will have great reality for
you because they are beautiful and true. In the Kingdom, where you are and what
you are is perfectly certain.There is no doubt there because the first question was
never asked. Having finally been wholly answered, it has never been. Being alone
lives in the Kingdom, where everything lives in God without question. The time
that was spent on questioning in the dream has given way to creation and to its
eternity.
52
You are as certain as God because you are as true as He is, but what was
once quite certain in your minds has become only the ability for certainty. The
introduction of abilities into being was the beginning of uncertainty because
abilities are potentials, not accomplishments. Your abilities are totally useless in
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v. The
Only Answer
the presence of God’s accomplishments and also of yours. Accomplishments are
results which have been achieved. When they are perfect, abilities are meaningless.
It is curious that the perfect must now be perfected. In fact, it is impossible.
You must remember, however, that when you put yourselves in an impossible
situation, you believed that the impossible was possible.
53
Abilities must be developed, or you cannot use them. This is not true of
anything that God created, but it is the kindest solution possible to what you
have made. In an impossible situation, you can develop your abilities to the point
where they can get you out of it. You have a Guide to how to develop them, but
you have no commander except yourself.This leaves you in charge of the Kingdom
with both a Guide to find it and a means to keep it. You have a model to follow
who will strengthen your command and never detract from it in any way. You
therefore retain the central place in your perceived enslavement, a fact which itself
demonstrates that you are not enslaved.
54
You are in an impossible situation only because you thought it was possible
to be in one. You would be in an impossible situation if God showed you your
perfection and proved to you that you were wrong. This would demonstrate that
the perfect were inadequate to bring themselves to the awareness of their perfection
and thus side with the belief that those who have everything need help and are
therefore helpless. This is the kind of “reasoning” which the ego engages in, but
God, Who knows that His creations are perfect, does not insult them. This would
be as impossible as the ego’s notion that it has insulted Him.
55
That is why the Holy Spirit never commands. To command is to assume
inequality, which the Holy Spirit demonstrates does not exist. Fidelity to premises
is a law of mind, and everything God created is faithful to His laws. Fidelity to
other laws is also possible, however, not because the laws are true, but because you
made them. What would be gained if God proved to you that you have thought
insanely? Can God lose His own certainty? We have frequently stated that what
you teach you are. Would you have God teach you that you have sinned? If He
confronted the self you made with the truth He created for you, what could you
be but afraid? You would doubt your sanity, which is the one thing in which you
can find the sanity He gave you.
56
God does not teach.To teach is to imply a lack which God knows is not there.
God is not conflicted.Teaching aims at change, but God created only the changeless.
The separation was not a loss of perfection but a failure in communication. A
harsh and strident form of communication arose as the ego’s voice. It could not
shatter the peace of God, but it could shatter yours. God did not blot it out because
111
to eradicate it would be to attack it. Being questioned, He did not question. He
merely gave the Answer. His Answer is your Teacher.
a. To Have, Give All to All
57
Like any good teacher, the Holy Spirit does know more than you do now,
but He teaches only to make you equal with Him.This is because you had already
taught wrongly, having believed what was not true. You did not believe in your own
perfection. Could God teach you that you had made a split mind, when He knows
your mind only as whole? What God does know is that His communication
channels are not open to Him so that He cannot impart His joy and know that
His Children are wholly joyous. This is an ongoing process, not in time, but
in eternity. God’s extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked
when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thought, “My
Children sleep and must be awakened.”
58
How can you wake children better and more kindly than by a gentle Voice
that will not frighten them but will merely remind them that the night is over
and the light has come? You do not inform them that the nightmares which
frightened them so badly were not real because children believe in magic. You
merely reassure them that they are safe now. Then you train them to recognize the
difference between sleeping and waking, so that they will understand they need
not be afraid of dreams. Then when bad dreams come, they will call on the light
themselves to dispel them.
59
A wise teacher teaches through approach, not avoidance. He does not emphasize
what you must avoid to escape from harm so much as what you need to learn
to have joy. This is true even of the world’s teachers. Consider the confusion a
child would experience if he were told, “Do not do this because it might hurt
you and make you unsafe, but if you do that you will escape from harm and be
safe, and then you will not be afraid.” All of this could be included in only three
words: “Do only that!” This simple statement is perfectly clear, easily understood,
and very easily remembered.
60
The Holy Spirit never itemizes errors because He does not frighten children,
and those who lack wisdom are children.Yet He always answers their call, and His
dependability makes them more certain. Children do confuse fantasy and reality,
and they are frightened because they do not know the difference.The Holy Spirit
makes no distinction among dreams. He merely shines them away. His light is
always the call to awake, whatever you have been dreaming. Nothing lasting lies
in dreams, and the Holy Spirit, shining with the light from God Himself, speaks
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v. The
Only Answer
only for what lasts forever.
61
When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know
that you will last forever. Many think this is accomplished through death, but
nothing is accomplished through death because death is nothing. Everything is
accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and in the Mind. The body
neither lives nor dies because it cannot contain you who are life. If we share the
same mind, you can overcome death because I did. Death is an attempt to resolve
conflict by not willing at all. Like any other impossible solution which the ego
attempts, it will not work.
62
God did not make the body because it is destructible and therefore not of
the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of what you think you are. It is clearly a
separation device and therefore does not exist. The Holy Spirit, as always, takes
what you have made and translates it into a learning device for you. Again as
always, He re-interprets what the ego uses as an argument for separation into a
demonstration against it. If the mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal
the mind, then the mind must be stronger. Every miracle demonstrates this.
63
We have said that the Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracles.This is because
He always tells you that only the mind is real since only the mind can be shared.
The body is separate and therefore cannot be part of you. To be of one mind is
meaningful, but to be of one body is meaningless. By the laws of mind, then, the
body is meaningless. To the Holy Spirit, there is no order of difficulty in miracles. This
is familiar enough to you by now, but it has not yet become believable. Therefore,
you do not understand it and cannot use it.
64
We have too much to accomplish on behalf of the Kingdom to let this
crucial concept slip away. It is a real foundation stone of the thought system I
teach and want you to teach. You cannot perform miracles without believing it
because it is a belief in perfect equality. Only one equal gift can be offered to the
equal Sons of God, and that is full appreciation. Nothing more and nothing less.
Without a range, an order of difficulty is meaningless, and there must be no range
in what you offer to each other.
65
The Holy Spirit, who leads to God, translates communication into being, just
as He ultimately translates perception into knowledge.The ego uses the body for
attack, for pleasure, and for pride.The insanity of this perception makes it a fearful
one indeed. The Holy Spirit sees the body only as a means of communication and
because communicating is sharing, it becomes communion.You might argue that
fear as well as love can be communicated and therefore can be shared.Yet this is
not so real as it sounds. Those who communicate fear are promoting attack, and
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attack always breaks communication, making it impossible.
66
Egos do join together in temporary allegiance but always for what each one
can get separately. The Holy Spirit communicates only what each one can give to all.
He never takes anything back because He wants you to keep it. Therefore, His
teaching begins with the lesson:
67
To have, give all to all.
This is a very preliminary step, and the only one you must take for yourself.
It is not even necessary that you complete the step yourself, but it is necessary that
you turn in that direction. Having chosen to go that way, you place yourself in
charge of the journey, where you and only you must remain.
69
This step appears to exacerbate conflict rather than resolve it because it is
the beginning step in reversing your perception and turning it right-side up. This
conflicts with the upside-down perception which you have not yet abandoned,
or the change in direction would not have been necessary. Some people remain
at this step for a very long time, experiencing very acute conflict. At this point,
many try to accept the conflict rather than take the next step towards its resolution.
Having taken the first step, however, they will be helped. Once they have chosen
what they cannot complete alone, they are no longer alone.
68
b. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It
70
All the separated ones have a basic fear of retaliation and abandonment.
This is because they believe in attack and rejection, so this is what they perceive
and teach and learn. These insane concepts are clearly the result of their own
dissociation and projection. What you teach you are, but it is quite apparent that
you can teach wrongly and therefore teach yourselves wrong. Many thought that I
was attacking them, even though it was quite apparent that I was not. An insane
learner learns strange lessons.
71
What you must understand is that when you do not share a thought system,
you are weakening it.Those who believe in it therefore perceive this as an attack on
them.This is because everyone identifies himself with his thought system, and every
thought system centers on what you believe you are. If the center of the thought
system is true, only truth extends from it. But if a lie is at its center, only deception
proceeds from it. All good teachers realize that only fundamental change will last,
but they do not begin at that level. Strengthening motivation for change is their first
and foremost goal. It is also their last and final one.
72
Increasing motivation for change in the learner is all that a teacher need do to
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v. The
Only Answer
guarantee change.This is because a change in motivation is a change of mind, and
this will inevitably produce fundamental change because the mind is fundamental.
The first step in the reversal or undoing process, then, is the undoing of the getting
concept. Accordingly, the Holy Spirit’s first lesson was “to have, give all to all.” We
said that this is apt to increase conflict temporarily, and we can clarify this still
further now.
73
At this point, the equality of “having” and “being” is not yet perceived. Until
it is, “having” appears to be the opposite of “being.” Therefore, the first lesson
seems to contain a contradiction since it is being learned by a conflicted mind. This
means conflicting motivation, and so the lesson cannot be learned consistently
as yet. Further, the mind of the learner projects its own split, and thus does not
perceive consistent minds in others, making him suspicious of their motivation.
This is the real reason why in many respects the first lesson is the hardest to learn.
Still strongly aware of the ego in himself and responding primarily to the ego in
others, he is being taught to react to both as if what he does believe is not true.
74
Upside-down as always, the ego perceives the first lesson as insane. In fact
this is its only alternative here since the other one, which would be much less
acceptable to it, would obviously be that it is insane. The ego’s judgment, then,
is predetermined by what it is, though no more so than is any other product of
thought. The fundamental change will still occur with the change of mind in
the thinker. Meanwhile, the increasing clarity of the Holy Spirit’s Voice makes it
impossible for the learner not to listen. For a time, then, he is receiving conflicting
messages and accepting both. This is the classic “double bind” in communication.
75
The way out of conflict between two opposing thought systems is clearly to
choose one and relinquish the other. If you identify with your thought system, and
you cannot escape this, and if you accept two thought systems which are in
complete disagreement, peace of mind is impossible. If you teach both, which you
will surely do as long as you accept both, you are teaching conflict and learning it.
Yet you do want peace, or you would not have called upon the Voice for Peace to
help you. His lesson is not insane; the conflict is.
76
There can be no conflict between sanity and insanity. Only one is true, and
therefore only one is real. The ego tries to persuade you that it is up to you to
decide which voice is true, but the Holy Spirit teaches you that truth was created
by God, and your decision cannot change it. As you begin to realize the quiet
power of the Holy Spirit’s Voice and its perfect consistency, it must dawn on your
minds that you are trying to undo a decision which was made irrevocably for you.
That is why we suggested before that there was help in reminding yourselves to
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v. The
allow the Holy Spirit to decide for God for you.
77
You are not asked to make insane decisions, although you are free to think you
are. It must, however, be insane to believe that it is up to you to decide what God’s
creations are. The Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is. Therefore, His
second lesson is:
78
To have peace, teach peace to learn it.
This is still a preliminary step since having and being are still not equated. It is,
however, more advanced than the first step, which is really only a thought reversal.
The second step is a positive affirmation of what you want. This, then, is a step in
the direction out of conflict since it means that alternatives have been considered
and one has been chosen as more desirable.
80
Nevertheless, the evaluation “more desirable” still implies that the desirable
has degrees. Therefore, although this step is essential for the ultimate decision, it is
clearly not the final one. It is clear at this point that the lack of order of difficulty
in miracles has not yet been accepted because nothing is difficult that is wholly
desired.To desire wholly is to create, and creating cannot be difficult if God Himself
created you as a creator. The second step, then, is still perceptual, although it is a
giant step toward the unified perception which parallels God’s knowing.
81
As you take this step and hold this direction, you will be pushing toward the
center of your thought system where the fundamental change will occur. You
are only beginning this step now, but you have started on this way by realizing
that only one way is possible. You do not yet realize this consistently, and so your
progress is intermittent, but the second step is easier than the first because it
follows. The very fact that you have accepted that is a demonstration of your
growing awareness that the Holy Spirit will lead you on.
79
c. Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom
82
For your own salvation you must be critical since your salvation is critical
to the whole Sonship. We said before that the Holy Spirit is evaluative and must
be.Yet His evaluation does not extend beyond you, or you would share it. In your
mind, and your mind only, He sorts out the true from the false and teaches you
to judge every thought that you allow to enter your mind in the light of what
God put there. Whatever is in accord with this light, He retains to strengthen the
Kingdom in you. What is partly in accord with truth, He accepts and purifies. But
what is out of accord entirely, He rejects by judging against. This is how He keeps
the Kingdom perfectly consistent and perfectly unified.
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Only Answer
What you must remember, however, is that what the Holy Spirit rejects the
ego accepts.This is because they are in fundamental disagreement about everything,
being in fundamental disagreement about what you are. The ego’s beliefs on this
crucial issue vary, and that is why it promotes different moods. The Holy Spirit
never varies on this point, and so the one mood He engenders is joy. He protects
it by rejecting everything that does not foster joy, and so He alone can keep you
wholly joyous.
84
The Holy Spirit does not teach your mind to be critical of other minds
because He does not want you to teach errors and learn them yourselves. He would
hardly be consistent if He allowed you to strengthen what you must learn to avoid.
In the mind of the thinker, then, He is judgmental, but only in order to unify
the mind so it can perceive without judgment. This enables the mind to teach
without judgment and therefore to learn to be without judgment. The undoing is
necessary only in your mind so that you cannot project falsely. God Himself has
established what you can project with perfect safety. Therefore, the Holy Spirit’s
third lesson is:
83
85
Be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom.
This is a major step toward fundamental change.Yet it is still a lesson in thought
reversal since it implies that there is something you must be vigilant against. It has
advanced far from the first lesson, which was primarily a reversal and also from
the second, which was essentially the identification of what is more desirable.
This step, which follows from the second as the second follows from the first,
emphasizes the dichotomy between the desirable and the undesirable. It therefore
makes the ultimate choice inevitable.
87
While the first step seems to increase conflict and the second step still entails
it to some extent, this one calls for consistent effort against it. We said already that
you can be as vigilant against the ego as for it.This lesson teaches not only that you
can be, but that you must be. It does not concern itself with order of difficulty but
with clear cut priority for vigilance. This step is unequivocal in that it teaches there
must be no exceptions, although it does not deny that the temptation to make
exceptions will occur. Here, then, your consistency is called on despite chaos.Yet
chaos and consistency cannot coexist for long since they are mutually exclusive.
88
As long as you must be vigilant against anything, however, you are not
recognizing this mutual exclusiveness and are holding the belief that you can
choose either one. By teaching what to choose, the Holy Spirit will ultimately be
able to teach you that you need not choose at all. This will finally liberate your will
86
117
from choice and direct it towards creation within the Kingdom. Choosing through
the Holy Spirit will lead you to the Kingdom.You create by what you are, but this
is what you must learn. The way to learn it is inherent in the third step, which
brings together the lessons implied in the others and goes beyond them towards
real integration.
89
If you allow yourselves to have in your minds only what God put there, you
are acknowledging your mind as God created it. Therefore, you are accepting it
as it is. Since it is whole, you are teaching peace because you believe in it. The
final step will still be taken for you by God, but by the third step the Holy Spirit
has prepared you for God. He is getting you ready for the translation of having into
being by the very nature of the steps you must take with Him.
90
You learn first that having rests on giving and not on getting. Next you learn
that you learn what you teach and that you want to learn peace. This is the condition
for identifying with the Kingdom since it is the condition of the Kingdom.You
have believed that you are without the Kingdom and have therefore excluded
yourself from it in your belief. It is therefore essential to teach you that you must
be included and that the belief that you are not is the only thing that you must
exclude.
91
The third step is thus one of protection for your minds, allowing you to identify
only with the center, where God placed the altar to Himself.We have already said
that altars are beliefs, but God and His creations are beyond belief because they are
beyond question.The Voice for God speaks only for belief beyond question, which
is the preparation for being without question. As long as belief in God and His
Kingdom is assailed by any doubts in your minds, His perfect accomplishment
is not apparent to you. This is why you must be vigilant on God’s behalf. The ego
speaks against His creation and therefore does engender doubt. You cannot go
beyond belief until you believe fully.
92
Transfer, which is extension, is a measure of learning because it is its measurable
result. This, however, does not mean that what it transfers to is measurable. On
the contrary, unless it transfers to the whole Sonship, which is immeasurable
because it was created by the Immeasurable, the learning itself must be incomplete.
To teach the whole Sonship without exception demonstrates that you perceive its
wholeness and have learned that it is one. Now you must be vigilant to hold its
oneness in your minds because, if you let doubt enter, you will lose awareness of
its wholeness and will be unable to teach it.
93
The wholeness of the Kingdom does not depend on your perception, but your
awareness of its wholeness does. It is only your awareness which needs protection
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v. The
Only Answer
since your being cannot be assailed.Yet a real sense of being cannot be yours while
you are doubtful of what you are. This is why vigilance is essential. Doubts about
being must not enter your mind, or you cannot know what you are with certainty.
Certainty is of God for you.Vigilance is not necessary for truth, but it is necessary
against illusions.
94
Truth is without illusions and therefore within the Kingdom. Everything outside
the Kingdom is illusion, but you must learn to accept truth because you threw
it away.You therefore saw yourself as if you were without it. By making another
Kingdom which you valued, you did not keep only the Kingdom of God in your
minds and thus placed part of your mind outside it. What you have made has
thus divided your will and given you a sick mind which must be healed. Your
vigilance against this sickness is the way to heal it. Once your mind is healed, it
radiates health and thereby teaches healing. This establishes you as a teacher who
teaches like me.Vigilance was required of me as much as of you, but remember
that those who will to teach the same thing must be in agreement about what
they believe.
95
The third step, then, is a statement of what you want to believe and entails a
willingness to relinquish everything else. I told you that you were just beginning the
second step, but I also told you that the third one follows it. The Holy Spirit will
enable you to go on if you follow Him.Your vigilance is the sign that you want
Him to guide you. Vigilance does require effort, but only to teach you that effort itself is unnecessary.You have exerted great effort to preserve what you made
because it was not true. Therefore, you must now turn your effort against it. Only
this can cancel out the need for effort and call upon the being which you both
have and are. This recognition is wholly without effort since it is already true and
needs no protection. It is in the perfect safety of God. Therefore inclusion is total
and creation is without limit.
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ii. Bargaining Versus
ii.
Healing
Bargaining Versus Healing
The ego demands reciprocal rights because it is competitive rather than loving.
It is always willing to make a “deal,” but it cannot understand that to be like
another means that no deals are possible. To gain you must give, not bargain. To
bargain is to limit giving, and this is not God’s Will. To will with God is to create
like Him. God does not limit His gifts in any way. You are His gifts, and so your
gifts must be like His.Your gifts to the Kingdom must be like His gifts to you.
5
I gave only love to the Kingdom because I believed that was what I was. What
you believe you are determines your gifts, and if God created you by extending
Himself as you, you can only extend yourself as He did. Only joy increases forever,
since joy and eternity are inseparable. God extends outward beyond limits and
beyond time, and you who are co-creators with Him extend His Kingdom
forever and beyond limit. Eternity is the indelible stamp of creation. The eternal
are in peace and joy forever.
6
To think like God is to share His certainty of what you are and to create like
Him is to share the perfect love He shares with you. To this the Holy Spirit leads
you that your joy may be complete because the Kingdom of God is whole. We
have said that the last step in the reawakening of knowledge is taken by God.
This is true, but it is hard to explain in words because words are symbols, and
nothing that is true needs to be explained. However, the Holy Spirit has the task
of translating the useless into the useful, the meaningless into the meaningful, and
the temporary into the timeless. He can therefore tell you something about this
last step, although this one you must know yourself, since by it you know what
you are. This is your being.
7
God does not take steps because His accomplishments are not gradual. He
does not teach because His creations are changeless. He does nothing last because
He created first and for always. It must be understood that the word “first” as
applied to Him is not a time concept. He is first in the sense that He is the first
in the Holy Trinity itself. He is the Prime Creator because He created His cocreators. Because He did, time applies neither to Him nor to what He created.The
“last step” that God will take was therefore true in the beginning, is true now,
and will be true forever.
8
What is timeless is always there because its being is eternally changeless. It does
not change by increase because it was forever created to increase. If you perceive it
as not increasing, you do not know what it is.You also do not know what created
it or Who He is. God does not reveal this to you because it was never hidden. His
light was never obscured because it is His Will to share it. How can what is fully
4
seven
The Consistency of the Kingdom
i.
T
Introduction
he creative power of both God and His creations is limitless, but they
are not in reciprocal relationship. You do communicate fully with God,
as He does with you. This is an ongoing process in which you share, and because
you share it, you are inspired to create like God. Yet in creation you are not in
reciprocal relation to God since He created you, but you did not create Him. We
have already said that only in this respect your creative power differs from His.
Even in this world there is a parallel. Parents give birth to children, but children
do not give birth to parents. They do, however, give birth to their children and
thus give birth as their parents do.
7:2
If you created God and He created you, the Kingdom could not increase
through its own creative thought. Creation would therefore be limited, and you
would not be co-creators with God. As God’s creative Thought proceeds from
Him to you, so must your creative thought proceed from you to your creations.
Only in this way can all creative power extend outward. God’s accomplishments
are not yours. But yours are like His. He created the Sonship, and you increase it.
You have the power to add to the Kingdom, but not to add to the Creator of the
Kingdom.You claim this power when you become vigilant only for God and His
Kingdom. By accepting this power as yours, you have learned to be what you are.
3
Your creations belong in you, as you belong in God. You are part of God, as
your sons are part of His Sons. To create is to love. Love extends outward simply
because it cannot be contained. Being limitless, it does not stop. It creates forever,
but not in time. God’s creations have always been because He has always been.
Your creations have always been because you can create only as God creates.
Eternity is yours because He created you eternal.
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iii. The
Chapter 7: THE CONSISTENCY OF THE KINGDOM
shared be withheld and then revealed?
9
To heal is the only kind of thinking in this world that resembles the Thought
of God, and because of the elements which they share, can transfer to it. When a
brother perceives himself as sick, he is perceiving himself as not whole and therefore
in need. If you too see him this way, you are seeing him as if he were absent from
the Kingdom or separated from it, thus making the Kingdom itself obscure to
both of you. Sickness and separation are not of God, but the Kingdom is. If you
obscure the Kingdom, you are perceiving what is not of God.
iii. The
Laws
of
Mind
To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother and yourself by sharing
the Holy Spirit with him. This places you both within the Kingdom and restores
its wholeness in your minds. This parallels creation because it unifies by increasing
and integrates by extending. What you project you believe. This is an immutable
law of the mind in this world as well as in the Kingdom. However, the content
is different in this world because the thoughts it governs are very different from
the thoughts in the Kingdom. Laws must be adapted to circumstances if they are
to maintain order.
11
The outstanding characteristic of the laws of mind as they operate in this world
is that by obeying them—and I assure you that you must obey them—you can
arrive at diametrically opposed results. This is because the laws have adapted
to the circumstances of this world, in which diametrically opposed outcomes
are believed in. The laws of mind govern thoughts, and you do respond to two
conflicting voices.You have heard many arguments on behalf of “the freedoms,”
which would indeed have been freedom if man had not chosen to fight for them.
That is why they perceive “the freedoms” as many instead of as one.Yet the argument that underlies the defense of freedom is perfectly valid. Because it is true, it
should not be fought for, but it should be sided with.
12
Those who are against freedom believe that its outcome will hurt them, which
cannot be true. But those who are for freedom, even if they are misguided in how
to defend it, are siding with the one thing in this world which is true. Whenever
anyone can listen fairly to both sides of any issue, he will make the right decision.
This is because he has the answer. Conflict can seem to be interpersonal, but it
must be intrapersonal first.
13
The term “intrapersonal” is an ego term because “personal” implies “of one
person” and not of others. “Interpersonal” has similar error in that it refers to
something that exists among different or separate people.When we spoke before of
10
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Laws of Mind
the extremely personal nature of revelation, we followed this statement immediately
with a description of the inevitable outcomes of the revelation in terms of sharing.
A person conceives of himself as separate largely because he perceives of himself
as bounded by a body. Only if he perceives himself as a mind can this be overcome.
Then he is free to use terms like “intramental” and “intermental” without seeing
them as different or conflicting, because minds can be in perfect accord.
14
Outside the Kingdom, the law which prevails inside it is adapted to “what you
project you believe.” This is its teaching form, since outside the Kingdom teaching
is mandatory because learning is essential. This form of the law clearly implies
that you will learn what you are from what you have projected onto others
and therefore believe they are. In the Kingdom there is no teaching or learning
because there is no belief. There is only certainty. God and His Sons, in the surety
of being, know that what you project you are. That form of the law is not adapted
at all, being the law of creation. God Himself created the law by creating by it.
And His Sons, who create like Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the increase of
the Kingdom depends on it just as their own creation did.
15
Laws must be communicated if they are to be helpful. In effect, they must be
translated for those who speak a different language. Nevertheless, a good translator,
although he must alter the form of what he translates, never changes the meaning.
In fact, his whole purpose is to change the form so that the original meaning is
retained. The Holy Spirit is the translator of the Laws of God to those who do not
understand them.You could not do this yourselves because conflicted minds cannot
be faithful to one meaning and will therefore change the meaning to preserve the form.
16
The Holy Spirit’s purpose in translating is naturally exactly the opposite. He
translates only to preserve the original meaning in all respects and in all languages.
Therefore, He opposes differences in form as meaningful, emphasizing always
that these differences do not matter. The meaning of His message is always the same,
and only the meaning matters. God’s Law of Creation in perfect form does not
involve the use of truth to convince His Sons of truth. The extension of truth,
which is the Law of the Kingdom, rests only on the knowledge of what truth is.
This is your inheritance and requires no learning at all, but when you disinherited
yourselves, you became learners.
17
No one questions the intimate connection of learning and memory.
Learning is impossible without memory, since it cannot be consistent unless it is
remembered. That is why the Holy Spirit is a lesson in remembering. We said
before that He teaches remembering and forgetting, but the forgetting aspect is
only to make the remembering consistent. You forget in order to remember better. You
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v. The
will not understand His translations while you listen to two ways of perceiving
them.Therefore, you must forget or relinquish one to understand the other.This is
the only way you can learn consistency so that you can finally be consistent.
18
What can the perfect consistency of the Kingdom mean to the confused? It
is apparent that confusion interferes with meaning and therefore prevents the learner
from appreciating it. There is no confusion in the Kingdom because there is only one
meaning.This meaning comes from God and is God. Because it is also you, you share
it and extend it as your Creator did. This needs no translation because it is perfectly
understood, but it does need extension because it means extension. Communication
is perfectly direct and perfectly united. It is totally without strain because nothing
discordant ever enters.That is why it is the Kingdom of God. It belongs to Him and
is therefore like Him. That is its reality, and nothing can assail it.
iv. The
Unified Curriculum
To heal is to liberate totally. We once said there is no order of difficulty in
miracles because they are all maximal expressions of love. This has no range at
all. The non-maximal only appears to have a range. This is because it seems to be
meaningful to measure it from the maximum and identify its position by how much
it is not there. Actually, this does not mean anything. It is like negative numbers in
that the concept can be used theoretically, but it has no application practically. It
is true that if you put three apples on the table and then take them away, the three
apples are not there. But it is not true that the table is now minus three apples. If
there is nothing on the table, it does not matter what was there in terms of amount.
The “nothing” is neither greater nor less because of what is absent.
20
That is why “all” and “nothing” are dichotomous, without a range. This is
perfectly clear in considering psychological tests of maximal performance. You
cannot interpret the results at all unless you assume either maximal motivation
or no motivation at all. Only in these two conditions can you validly compare
responses, and you must assume the former, because if the latter were true, the
subject would not do anything. Given variable motivation, he will do something,
but you cannot understand what it is.
21
The results of such tests are evaluated relatively assuming maximal motivation,
but this is because we are dealing with abilities, where degree of development is
meaningful.This does not mean that what the ability is used for is necessarily either
limited or divided.Yet one thing is certain; abilities are potentials for learning, and
you will apply them to what you want to learn. Learning is effort, and effort means
will. We have used the term “abilities” in the plural because abilities began with
19
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Recognition of Truth
the ego, which perceived them as potentials for excelling. This is how the ego still
perceives them and uses them.
22
The ego does not want to teach everyone all it has learned because that would
defeat its purpose. Therefore, it does not really learn at all. The Holy Spirit teaches
you to use what the ego has made to teach the opposite of what the ego has
learned. The kind of learning is as irrelevant as is the particular ability which was
applied to the learning.You could not have a better example of the Holy Spirit’s
unified purpose than this course. The Holy Spirit has taken very diversified areas
of your learning and has applied them to a unified curriculum. The fact that this
was not the ego’s reason for learning is totally irrelevant.
23
You made the effort to learn, and the Holy Spirit has a unified goal for all
effort. He adapts the ego’s potentials for excelling to potentials for equalizing.
This makes them useless for the ego’s purpose but very useful for His. If different
abilities are applied long enough to one goal, the abilities themselves become
unified. This is because they are channelized in one direction or in one way.
Ultimately, then, they all contribute to one result, and by so doing, their similarity
rather than their differences is emphasized. You can excel in many different ways,
but you can equalize in one way only. Equality is not a variable state, by definition.
24
That it why you will be able to perform all aspects of your work with ease
when you have learned this course.To the ego there appears to be no connection,
because the ego is discontinuous.Yet the Holy Spirit teaches one lesson and applies
it to all individuals in all situations. Being conflict-free, He maximizes all efforts
and all results. By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He
teaches you that all power is yours. Its application does not matter. It is always
maximal.Your vigilance does not establish it as yours, but it does enable you to use
it always and in all ways.
25
When I said, “I am with you always,” I meant it literally. I am not absent to
anyone in any situation. Because I am always with you, you are the way and the
truth and the light. You did not make this power, any more than I did. It was
created to be shared and therefore cannot be meaningfully perceived as belonging
to anyone at the expense of another. Such a perception makes it meaningless by
eliminating or overlooking its real and only meaning.
v. The
Recognition
of Truth
God’s meaning waits in the Kingdom because that is where He placed it. It
does not wait in time. It merely rests in the Kingdom because it belongs there, as
You do. How can you, who are God’s meaning, perceive yourselves as absent from
26
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v. The
it? You can see yourselves as separated from your meaning only by experiencing
yourself as unreal. This is why the ego is insane; it teaches that you are not what
you are. This is so contradictory that it is clearly impossible. It is therefore a lesson
which you cannot really learn, and therefore cannot really teach. Yet you are always
teaching.You must therefore be teaching something else as well, even though the
ego does not know what it is.
27
The ego, then, is always being undone and does suspect your motives. Your
mind cannot be unified in allegiance to the ego because the mind does not belong
to it.Yet what is “treacherous” to the ego is faithful to peace.The ego’s “enemy” is
therefore your friend. We said before that the ego’s friend is not part of you, since
the ego perceives itself as at war and therefore in need of allies. You who are not
at war must look for brothers and recognize all whom you see as brothers, because
only equals are at peace.
28
Because God’s equal Sons have everything, they cannot compete. Yet if they
perceive any of their brothers as anything other than their perfect equals, the
idea of competition has entered their minds. Do not underestimate your need
to be vigilant against this idea, because all your conflicts come from it. It is the
belief that conflicting interests are possible, and therefore you have accepted
the impossible as true. How is that different from saying that you are perceiving
yourself as unreal?
29
To be in the Kingdom is merely to focus your full attention on it. As long as
you believe that you can attend to what is not true, you are accepting conflict as
your choice. Is it really a choice? It seems to be, but seeming and reality are hardly
the same. You who are the Kingdom are not concerned with seeming. Reality
is yours because you are reality. This is how having and being are ultimately
reconciled, not in the Kingdom, but in your minds. The altar there is the only
reality. The altar is perfectly clear in thought because it is a reflection of perfect
Thought. It sees only brothers because it sees only in its own light.
30
God has lit your minds Himself and keeps your minds lit by His light because
His light is what your minds are. This is totally beyond question, and when you
questioned it you were answered. The answer merely undoes the question by
establishing the fact that to question reality is to question meaninglessly. That is
why the Holy Spirit never questions. His sole function is to undo the questionable
and thus lead to certainty. The certain are perfectly calm because they are not
in doubt. They do not raise questions because nothing questionable enters their
minds.This holds them in perfect serenity because this is what they share, knowing
what they are.
126
Recognition of Truth
As has so often been said, healing is both an art and a science. It is an art
because it depends on inspiration in the sense that we have already used the term.
Inspiration is the opposite of dispiriting and therefore means to make joyous. The
dispirited are depressed because they believe that they are literally “without the
Spirit,” which is an illusion.You do not put the Spirit in them by inspiring them
because that would be magic and therefore would not be real healing. You do,
however, recognize the Spirit that is already there and thereby reawaken it. This is
why the healer is part of the resurrection and the life. The Spirit is not asleep in
the minds of the sick, but the part of the mind that can perceive it and be glad is.
32
Healing is also a science because it obeys the laws of God, Whose laws are
true. Because they are true, they are perfectly dependable and therefore universal
in application. The real aim of science is neither prediction nor control but only
understanding.This is because it does not establish the laws it seeks, cannot discover
them through prediction, and has no control over them at all. Science is nothing
more than an approach to what already is. Like inspiration it can be misunderstood
as magic and will be whenever it is undertaken as separate from what already is and
perceived as a means for establishing it. To believe this is possible is to believe you
can do it. This can only be the voice of the ego.
33
Truth can only be recognized and need only be recognized. Inspiration is of the
Spirit and certainty is of God according to His laws. Both, therefore, come from
the same Source, since inspiration comes from the Voice for God and certainty
comes from the laws of God. Healing does not come directly from God, Who
knows His creations as perfectly whole. Yet healing is still of God because it
proceeds from His Voice and from His laws. It is their result, in a state of mind
which does not know Him. The state is unknown to Him and therefore does
not exist, but those who sleep are stupefied, or better, unaware. Because they are
unaware, they do not know.
34
The Holy Spirit must work through you to teach you He is in you. This is
an intermediary step toward the knowledge that you are in God because you
are part of Him. The miracles which the Holy Spirit inspires can have no order
of difficulty because every part of creation is of one order. This is God’s Will
and yours. The laws of God establish this, and the Holy Spirit reminds you of it.
When you heal, you are remembering the laws of God and forgetting the laws of
the ego. We said before that forgetting is merely a way of remembering better.
It is therefore not the opposite of remembering, when it is properly perceived.
Perceived improperly, it induces a perception of conflict with something else, as
all incorrect perception does. Properly perceived, it can be used as a way out of
31
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vi. Healing and the
conflict, as all proper perception can.
35
All abilities, then, should be given over to the Holy Spirit, Who knows how
to use them properly. He can use them only for healing because He knows you
only as whole. By healing you learn of wholeness, and by learning of wholeness
you learn to remember God. You have forgotten Him, but the Holy Spirit still
knows that your forgetting must be translated into a way of remembering and not
perceived as a separate ability which opposes an opposite. That is the way in
which the ego tries to use all abilities since its goal is always to make you believe
that you are in opposition.
36
The ego’s goal is as unified as the Holy Spirit’s, and it is because of this that
their goals can never be reconciled in any way or to any extent. The ego always
seeks to divide and separate. The Holy Spirit always seeks to unify and heal. As
you heal you are healed because the Holy Spirit sees no order of healing. Healing
is the way to undo the belief in differences, being the only way of perceiving the
Sonship without this belief. This perception is therefore in accord with the laws
of God, even in a state of mind which is out of accord with His. The strength of
right perception is so great that it brings the mind into accord with His because
it yields to His pull which is in all of you.
37
To oppose the pull or the Will of God is not an ability but a real delusion. The
ego believes that it has this ability and can offer it to you as a gift. You do not want it.
It is not a gift. It is nothing at all. God has given you a gift which you both have and
are. When you do not use it, you do not know you have it. By not knowing this,
you do not know what you are. Healing, then, is a way of approaching knowledge
by thinking in accordance with the laws of God and recognizing their universality.
Without this recognition, you have made the laws themselves meaningless to you.
Yet the laws are not meaningless, since all meaning is contained by them and in
them.
38
Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven because that is where the laws of God
operate truly, and they can operate only truly since they are the laws of Truth. But
seek this only because you can find nothing else. There is nothing else. God is all
in all in a very literal sense. All being is in Him who is all Being. You are therefore
in Him since your being is His. Healing is a way of forgetting the sense of danger
the ego has induced in you by not recognizing its existence in your brothers. This
strengthens the Holy Spirit in both of you, because it is a refusal to acknowledge
fear. Love needs only this invitation. It comes freely to all the Sonship, being what
the Sonship is. By your awakening to it, you are merely forgetting what you are
not. This enables you to remember what you are.
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vi.
Healing
and the
Changelessness
Changelessness of Mind
of
Mind
The body is nothing more than a framework for developing abilities. It is
therefore a means for developing potentials, which is quite apart from what the
potential is used for. That is a decision. The effects of the ego’s decision in this
matter are so apparent that they need no elaboration here, but the Holy Spirit’s
decision to use the body only for communication has such a direct connection
with healing that it does need clarification.The unhealed healer obviously does not
understand his own vocation.
40
Only minds communicate. Since the ego cannot obliterate the impulse to
communicate because it is also the impulse to create, the ego can only teach
you that the body can both communicate and create and therefore does not need
the mind. The ego thus tries to teach you that the body can act like the mind
and is therefore self-sufficient. Yet we have learned that behavior is not the level
for either teaching or learning. This must be so, since you can act in accordance
with what you do not believe. To do this, however, will weaken you as teachers
and learners because, as has been repeatedly emphasized, you teach what you
do believe. An inconsistent lesson will be poorly taught and poorly learned. If you
teach both sickness and healing, you are both a poor teacher and a poor learner.
41
Healing is the one ability which everyone can develop and must develop if he is
to be healed. Healing is the Holy Spirit’s form of communication and the only one
He knows. He recognizes no other, because He does not accept the ego’s confusion
of mind and body. Minds can communicate, but they cannot hurt. The body in the
service of the ego can hurt other bodies, but this cannot occur unless the body has
already been confused with the mind. This fact, too, can be used either for healing
or for magic, but you must remember that magic is always the belief that healing is
harmful. This is its totally insane premise, and so it proceeds accordingly.
42
Healing only strengthens. Magic always tries to weaken. Healing perceives
nothing in the healer that everyone else does not share with him. Magic always
sees something “special” in the healer which he believes he can offer as a gift to
someone who does not have it. He may believe that the gift comes from God to
Him, but it is quite evident that he does not understand God if he thinks he has
something that others lack.You might well ask, then, why some healing can result
from this kind of thinking, and there is a reason for this.
43
However misguided the “magical healer” may be, he is also trying to help.
He is conflicted and unstable, but at times he is offering something to the
Sonship, and the only thing the Sonship can accept is healing. When the so-called
“healing” works, then, the impulse to help and to be helped have coincided.
39
129
This is coincidental because the healer may not be experiencing himself as truly
helpful at the time, but the belief that he is, in the mind of another, helps him.
44
The Holy Spirit does not work by chance, and healing that is of Him always
works. Unless the healer always heals by Him, the results will vary.Yet healing itself
is consistence since only consistence is conflict-free, and only the conflict-free are
whole. By accepting exceptions and acknowledging that he can sometimes heal
and sometimes not, the healer is obviously accepting inconsistency. He is therefore in
conflict and teaching conflict. Can anything of God not be for all and for always?
45
Love is incapable of any exceptions. Only if there is fear does the idea of
exceptions seem to be meaningful. Exceptions are fearful because they are made
by fear. The “fearful healer” is a contradiction in terms and is therefore a concept
which only a conflicted mind could possibly perceive as meaningful. Fear does
not gladden. Healing does. Fear always makes exceptions. Healing never does. Fear
produces dissociation because it induces separation. Healing always produces
harmony because it proceeds from integration.
46
Healing is predictable because it can be counted on. Everything that is of God
can be counted on because everything of God is wholly real. Healing can be
counted on because it is inspired by His Voice and is in accord with His laws.Yet
if healing is consistence, it cannot be inconsistently understood. Understanding
means consistence because God means consistence. Since that is His meaning, it
is also yours.Your meaning cannot be out of accord with His because your whole
meaning, and your only meaning, comes from His and is like His. God cannot
be out of accord with Himself, and you cannot be out of accord with Him. You
cannot separate your self from your Creator, Who created you by sharing His
being with you.
47
The unhealed healer wants gratitude from his brothers, but he is not grateful
to them. This is because he thinks he is giving something to them and is not
receiving something equally desirable in return. His teaching is limited because he
is learning so little. His healing lesson is limited by his own ingratitude, which is a
lesson in sickness. Learning is constant and so vital in its power for change that a
Son of God can recognize his power in one instant and change the world in the
next. That is because by changing his mind he has changed the most powerful
device that was ever created for change.
48
This in no way contradicts the changelessness of mind as God created it, but you
think that you have changed it as long as you learn through the ego. This does place
you in a position of needing to learn a lesson which seems contradictory—you must
learn to change your mind about your mind. Only by this can you learn that it is
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vi. Healing and the
Changelessness of Mind
changeless.When you heal that is exactly what you are learning.You are recognizing
the changeless mind in your brother by realizing that he could not have changed his
mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is only the Holy Spirit in
him that never changes His mind. He himself must think he can, or he would not
perceive himself as sick. He therefore does not know what his self is.
49
If you see only the changeless in him, you have not really changed him at
all. By changing your mind about his for him, you help him undo the change his
ego thinks it has made in him. As you can hear two voices, so you can see in two
ways. One way shows you an image, or better, an idol which you may worship
out of fear but which you will never love.The other shows you only truth, which
you will love because you will understand it. Understanding is appreciation because
what you understand you can identify with, and by making it part of you, you have
accepted it with love.
50
That is how God Himself created you—in understanding, in appreciation, and
in love.The ego is totally unable to understand this, because it does not understand
what it makes; it does not appreciate it; and it does not love it. It incorporates to
take away. It literally believes that every time it deprives someone of something,
it has increased. We have spoken often of the increase of the Kingdom by your
creations, which can only be created as you were.The whole glory and perfect joy
that is the Kingdom lies in you to give. Do you not want to give it?
51
You cannot forget the Father because I am with you, and I cannot forget Him.
To forget me is to forget yourself and Him Who created you. Our brothers are
forgetful.That is why they need your remembrance of me and Him who created
me.Through this remembrance, you can change their minds about themselves, as I
can change yours. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs
and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours. I do not want to share my body in
communion because that is to share nothing.Yet I do want to share my mind with
you because we are of One Mind and that Mind is ours.
52
See only this Mind everywhere because only this is everywhere and in
everything. It is everything because it encompasses all things within itself. Blessed
are you who perceive only this, because you perceive only what it true. Come
therefore unto me and learn of the truth in you. The Mind we share is shared by
all our brothers, and as we see them truly, they will be healed. Let your mind shine
with mine upon their minds, and by our gratitude to them make them aware of
the light in them.
53
This light will shine back upon you and on the whole Sonship because this is
your proper gift to God. He will accept it and give it to the Sonship because it is
131
vii. From Vigilance to
acceptable to Him and therefore to His Sons. This is the true communion of the
Spirit,Who sees the altar of God in everyone and, by bringing it to your appreciation,
calls upon you to love God and His creations.You can appreciate the Sonship only as
one. This is part of the Law of Creation and therefore governs all thought.
vii.
From Vigilance
to
Peace
Although you can love the Sonship only as one, you can perceive it as fragmented.
It is impossible, however, for you to see something in part of it that you will not
attribute to all of it. That is why attack is never discrete and why attack must be
relinquished entirely. If it is not relinquished entirely, it is not relinquished at all.
Fear and love are equally reciprocal. They make or create, depending on whether
the ego or the Holy Spirit begets or inspires them, but they will return to the
mind of the thinker, and they will affect his total perception. That includes his
perception of God, of His creations, and of his own. He will not appreciate any
of them if he regards them fearfully. He will appreciate all of them if he regards
them with love.
55
The mind that accepts attack cannot love. That is because it believes that it can
destroy love and therefore does not understand what love is. If it does not understand
what love is, it cannot perceive itself as loving. This loses the awareness of being,
induces feelings of unreality, and results in utter confusion.Your own thinking has
done this because of its power, but your own thinking can also save you from this
because its power is not of your making.Your ability to direct your thinking as you
will is part of its power. If you do not believe you can do this, you have denied the
power of your thought and thus rendered it powerless in your belief.
56
The ingeniousness of the ego to preserve itself is enormous, but it stems from
the power of the mind, which the ego denies. This means that the ego attacks
what is preserving it, and this must be a source of extreme anxiety. That is why the
ego never knows what it is doing. It is perfectly logical but clearly insane. The
ego draws upon the one source which is totally inimical to its existence for its
existence. Fearful of perceiving the power of this source, it is forced to depreciate
it. This threatens its own existence, a state which it finds intolerable.
57
Remaining logical but still insane, the ego resolves this completely insane
dilemma in a completely insane way. It does not perceive its existence as threatened
by projecting the threat onto you and perceiving your being as nonexistent. This
ensures its continuance if you side with it by guaranteeing that you will not know
your own safety. The ego cannot afford to know anything. Knowledge is total, and
the ego does not believe in totality.This unbelief is its origin and, while the ego does
54
132
Peace
not love you, it is faithful to its own antecedents, begetting as it was begotten.
58
Mind always reproduces as it was produced. Produced by fear, the ego
reproduces fear. This is its allegiance, and this allegiance makes it treacherous to
love, because you are love. Love is your power, which the ego must deny. It must
also deny everything which this power gives you because it gives you everything.
No one who has everything wants the ego. Its own maker, then, does not want it.
Rejection is therefore the only decision which the ego could possibly encounter,
if the mind which made it knew itself. And if it recognized any part of the Sonship,
it would know itself.
59
The ego therefore opposes all appreciation, all recognition, all sane perception,
and all knowledge. It perceives their threat as total because it senses the fact that
all commitments the mind makes are total. Forced, therefore, to detach itself from
you who are mind, it is willing to attach itself to anything else. But there is nothing
else. It does not follow that the mind cannot make illusions, but it does follow that
if it makes illusions it will believe in them, because that is how it made them.
60
The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them merely because
He cannot perceive them at all. They therefore do not exist for Him. He resolves
the apparent conflict which they engender by perceiving conflict as meaningless.
We said before that the Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is, and it is
meaningless. The Holy Spirit does not want you to understand conflict; He wants
you to realize that because conflict is meaningless it cannot be understood. We
have already said that understanding brings appreciation, and appreciation brings
love. Nothing else can be understood because nothing else is real, and therefore
nothing else has meaning.
61
If you will keep in mind what the Holy Spirit offers you, you cannot be
vigilant for anything but God and His Kingdom. The only reason you find this
difficult is because you think there is something else. Belief does not require
vigilance unless it is conflicted. If it is, there are conflicting components within
it which have engendered a state of war, and vigilance therefore has become
essential.Vigilance has no place at all in peace. It is necessary against beliefs which
are not true and would never have been called upon by the Holy Spirit if you had
not believed the untrue.You cannot deny that, when you believe something, you
have made it true for you.
62
When you believe what God does not know, your thought seems to contradict His,
and this make it appear as if you are attacking Him.We have repeatedly emphasized
that the ego does believe it can attack God and tries to persuade you that you have
done this. If the mind cannot attack, the ego proceeds perfectly logically to the
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viii. The Total
position that you cannot be mind. By not seeing you as you are, it can see itself
as it wants to be. Aware of its weakness, the ego wants your allegiance, but not as
you really are. The ego therefore wants to engage your mind in its own delusional
system, because otherwise the light of your understanding would dispel it.
63
The ego wants no part of truth because the truth is that the ego is not true. If
truth is total, the untrue cannot exist. Commitment to either must be total, since
they cannot coexist in your minds without splitting them. If they cannot coexist in
peace and if you want peace, you must give up the idea of conflict entirely and for
all time. While you believe that two totally contradictory thought systems share
truth, your need for vigilance is apparent.Your minds are dividing their allegiance
between two kingdoms, and you are totally committed to neither.
64
Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond question, except
by you when you are thinking insanely. What you are is not established by your
perception and is not influenced by it at all.All perceived problems in identification
at any level are not problems of fact. They are problems of understanding, since
they mean that you believe what you can understand is up to you to decide.
The ego believes this totally, being fully committed to it. It is not true. The ego
therefore is totally committed to untruth, perceiving in total contradiction to the
Holy Spirit and to the knowledge of God.
65
You can be perceived with meaning only by the Holy Spirit because your
being is the knowledge of God. Any belief that you accept which is apart from
this will obscure God’s Voice in you and will therefore obscure God to you.
Unless you perceive His creation truly, you cannot know the Creator, since God
and His creation are not separate. The Oneness of the Creator and the creation
is your wholeness, your sanity, and your limitless power. This limitless power is
God’s gift to you, because it is what you are. If you dissociate your mind from
it, you are perceiving the most powerful force in the universe as if it were weak
because you do not believe you are part of it.
66
Perceived without your part in it, God’s creation is perceived as weak, and those
who see themselves as weakened do attack. The attack must be blind, however,
because there is nothing to attack.Therefore, they make up images, perceive them
as unworthy, and attack them for their unworthiness. That is all the world of the
ego is—nothing. It has no meaning. It does not exist. Do not try to understand
it, because if you do you are believing that it can be understood and is therefore
capable of being appreciated and loved. That would justify it, and it cannot be
justified.You cannot make the meaningless meaningful.This can only be an insane
attempt.
134
Commitment
Allowing insanity to enter your minds means that you have not judged sanity
as wholly desirable. If you want something else, you will make something else, but
because it is something else, it will attack your thought system and divide your
allegiance.You cannot create in this divided state, and you must be vigilant against
this divided state, because only peace can be extended. Your divided minds are
blocking the extension of the Kingdom, and its extension is your joy. If you do
not extend the Kingdom, you are not thinking with your Creator and creating
as He created.
68
In this depressing state, the Holy Spirit reminds you gently that you are sad
because you are not fulfilling your function as co-creators with God and are
therefore depriving yourselves of joy. This is not God’s Will but yours. If your will
is out of accord with God’s, you are willing without meaning.Yet because God’s
Will is unchangeable, no real conflict of will is possible. This is the Holy Spirit’s
perfectly consistent teaching.
69
Creation, not separation, is your will because it is God’s, and nothing that
opposes this means anything at all. Being a perfect accomplishment, the Sonship
can only accomplish perfectly, extending the joy in which it was created and
identifying itself with both its Creator and its creations, knowing they are one.
67
viii. The Total
Commitment
Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother, you will feel deprived. This is
because denial is as total as love. It is as impossible to deny part of the Sonship as it
is to love it in part. Nor is it possible to love it totally at times.You cannot be totally
committed sometimes. Remember a very early lesson—“Never underestimate the
power of denial.” It has no power in itself, but you can give it the power of your
mind, whose power is without limit of any kind. If you use it to deny reality,
reality is gone for you. Reality cannot be partly appreciated. That is why denying any
part of it means you have lost awareness of all of it.
71
That is the negative side of the law as it operates in this world. Yet denial is
a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as it is of being used
destructively. Used negatively it will be destructive because it will be used for
attack, but in the service of the Holy Spirit, the law requires you to recognize
only part of reality to appreciate all of it. Mind is too powerful to be subject to
exclusion.You will never be able to exclude yourself from what you project.
72
When a brother acts insanely, he is offering you an opportunity to bless him.
His need is yours. You need the blessing you can offer him. There is no way for
70
135
you to have it except by giving it. This is the law of God, and it has no exceptions.
What you deny you lack, not because it is lacking, but because you have denied
it in another and are therefore not aware of it in you. Every response you make is
determined by what you think you are, and what you want to be is what you think
you are. Therefore, what you want to be determines every response you make.
73
You do not need God’s blessing since that you have forever, but you do
need yours. The picture you see of yourselves is deprived, unloving, and very
vulnerable. You cannot love this. Yet you can very easily escape from it or better,
leave it behind. You are not there, and that is not you. Do not see this picture
in anyone, or you have accepted it as you. All illusions about the Sonship are
dispelled together as they were made together. Teach no one that he is what you
would not want to be.Your brother is the mirror in which you will see the image
of yourself as long as perception lasts. And perception will last until the Sonship
knows itself as whole.
74
You made perception, and it must last as long as you want it. Illusions are
investments. They will last as long as you value them.Values are relative, but they
are powerful because they are mental judgments.The only way to dispel illusions
is to withdraw all investment from them, and they will have no life for you
because you have put them out of your mind.While you include them in it, you are
giving life to them, except there is nothing there to receive your gift.
75
The gift of life is yours to give because it was given you. You are unaware of
your gift because you do not give it.You cannot make nothing live since it cannot
be enlivened.Therefore, you are not extending the gift you both have and are, and
so you do not know your being. All confusion comes from not extending life,
since that is not the Will of your Creator. You can do nothing apart from Him,
and you do do nothing apart from Him. Keep His way to remember yourselves
and teach His way, lest you forget yourselves. Give only honor to the Sons of the
living God and count yourselves among them gladly.
76
Only honor is a fitting gift for those whom God Himself created worthy of
honor and whom He honors. Give them the appreciation which God accords
them always because they are His beloved Sons in whom He is well pleased.You
cannot be apart from them because you are not apart from Him. Rest in His love
and protect your rest by loving. But love everything He created of which you are
a part, or you cannot learn of His peace and accept His gift for yourself and as
yourself.You cannot know your own perfection until you have honored all those
who were created like you.
77
One Child of God is the only teacher sufficiently worthy to teach another.
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viii. The Total
Commitment
One Teacher is in all your minds, and He teaches the same lesson to all. He always
teaches you the inestimable worth of every Son of God, teaching it with infinite
patience born of the infinite love for which He speaks. Every attack is a call for
His patience, since only His patience can translate attack into blessing.Those who
attack do not know they are blessed. They attack because they believe they are
deprived. Give therefore of your abundance and teach your brothers theirs. Do not
share their delusions of scarcity, or you will perceive yourself as lacking.
78
Attack could never promote attack unless you perceived it as a means of
depriving you of something you want.Yet you cannot lose anything unless you did
not value it and therefore did not want it.This makes you feel deprived of it, and by
projecting your own rejection, you believe that others are taking it from you. One
must be fearful if he believes that his brother is attacking him to tear the Kingdom
of Heaven from him. This is the ultimate basis for all of the ego’s projection.
79
Being the part of your mind which does not believe it is responsible for itself
and being without allegiance to God, the ego is incapable of trust. Projecting its
insane belief that you have been treacherous to your Creator, it believes that your
brothers, who are as incapable of this as you are, are out to take God from you.
Whenever a brother attacks another, this is what he believes. Projection always
sees your will in others. If you will to separate yourself from God, that is what
you will think others are doing to you.
80
You are the Will of God. Do not accept anything else as your will, or you
are denying what you are. Deny this and you will attack, believing you have been
attacked. But see the love of God in you, and you will see it everywhere because
it is everywhere. See His abundance in everyone, and you will know that you are
in Him with them. They are part of you, as you are part of God. You are as lonely
without understanding this as God Himself is lonely when His Sons do not
know Him.The peace of God is understanding this.There is only one way out of
the world’s thinking, just as there was only one way into it. Understand totally by
understanding totality.
81
Perceive any part of the ego’s thought system as wholly insane, wholly
delusional, and wholly undesirable, and you have correctly evaluated all of it.This
correction enables you to perceive any part of creation as wholly real, wholly
perfect, and wholly desirable. Wanting this only, you will have this only, and giving
this only you will be only this.The gifts you offer to the ego are always experienced
as sacrifices, but the gifts you offer to the Kingdom are gifts to you. They will
always be treasured by God because they belong to His beloved Sons who belong
to Him. All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His.
137
ix. The
ix. The
Defense
of
Conflict
We once said that without projection there can be no anger, but it is also
true that without projection there can be no love. Projection is a fundamental
law of the mind and therefore one which always operates. It is the law by which
you create and were created. It is the law which unifies the Kingdom and keeps
it in the Mind of God. To the ego, the law is perceived as a way of getting rid
of something it does not want. To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of
sharing by which you give what you value in order to keep it in your own mind.
83
Projection to the Holy Spirit is the law of extension. To the ego, it is the law
of deprivation. It therefore produces abundance or scarcity, depending on how
you choose to apply it. This choice is up to you, but it is not up to you to decide
whether or not you will utilize projection. Every mind must project because that
is how it lives, and every mind is life. The ego’s use of projection must be fully
understood before its inevitable association between projection and anger can be
finally undone.
84
The ego always tries to preserve conflict. It is very ingenious in devising ways
which seem to diminish conflict because it does not want you to find conflict so
intolerable that you will insist on giving it up.Therefore, the ego tries to persuade
you that it can free you of conflict, lest you give the ego up and free yourself. The
ego, using its own warped version of the laws of God, utilizes the power of the
mind only to defeat the mind’s real purpose. It projects conflict from your mind to
other minds in an attempt to persuade you that you have gotten rid of it. This has
several fallacies which may not be so apparent.
85
Strictly speaking, conflict cannot be projected precisely because it cannot be
fully shared. Any attempt to keep part of it and get rid of another part does not
really mean anything. Remember that a conflicted teacher is a poor teacher and
a poor learner. His lessons are confused, and their transfer value is severely limited
by his confusion. A second fallacy is the idea the you can get rid of something
you do not want by giving it away. Giving it is how you keep it. The belief that
by giving it out you have excluded it from within is a complete distortion of the
power of extension.
86
That is why those who project from the ego are vigilant for their own
safety. They are afraid that their projections will return and hurt them. They do
believe they have blotted their projections from their own minds, but they also
believe their projections are trying to creep back into them. That is because the
projections have not left their minds, and this in turn forces them to engage
in compulsive activity in order not to recognize this. You cannot perpetuate an
82
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Defense of Conflict
illusion about another without perpetuating it about yourself.There is no way out
of this because it is impossible to fragment the mind.
87
To fragment is to break into pieces, and mind cannot attack or be attacked.
The belief that it can, a fallacy which the ego always makes, underlies its whole
use of projection. It does not understand what mind is and therefore does not
understand what you are. Yet its existence is dependent on your mind because
the ego is your belief. The ego is therefore a confusion in identification which
never had a consistent model and never developed consistently. It is the distorted
product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted minds which are
misusing their own power.
88
Do not be afraid of the ego. It does depend on your mind and, as you made it by
believing in it, so you can dispel it by withdrawing belief from it. Do not project
the responsibility for your belief in it onto anyone else, or you will preserve the
belief. When you are willing to accept sole responsibility for the ego’s existence
yourself, you will have laid aside all anger and all attack because they come from
an attempt to project responsibility for your own errors. But having accepted the
errors as yours, do not keep them. Give them over quickly to the Holy Spirit to be
undone completely so that all their the affects will vanish from your minds and
from the Sonship as a whole.
89
The Holy Spirit will teach you to perceive beyond belief because truth is
beyond belief, and His perception is true.The ego can be completely forgotten at
any time because it was always a belief that is totally incredible. No one can keep
a belief he has judged to be unbelievable. The more you learn about the ego, the
more you realize that it cannot be believed.The incredible cannot be understood
because it is unbelievable. The utter meaninglessness of all perception that comes
from the unbelievable must be apparent, but it is not recognized as beyond belief
because it was made by belief.
90
The whole purpose of this course is to teach you that the ego is unbelievable
and will forever be unbelievable. You who made the ego by believing the
unbelievable cannot make this judgment alone. By accepting the Atonement for
yourself, you are deciding against the belief that you can be alone, thus dispelling
the idea of separation and affirming your true identification with the whole
Kingdom as literally part of you. This identification is as beyond doubt as it is
beyond belief.Your wholeness has no limits because being is in infinity.
139
x. The
x. The
Extension
of the
Kingdom
Only you can limit your creative power, but God wills to release it. He no
more wills you to deprive yourself of your creations than He wills to deprive
Himself of His. Do not withhold your gifts to the Sonship, or you withhold
yourself from God. Selfishness is of the ego, but self-fullness is of the Soul because
that is how God created it. The Holy Spirit is the part of the mind that lies
between the ego and the Soul, mediating between them always in favor of the
Soul. To the ego, this is partiality, and it therefore responds as if it were the part
that is being sided against.To the Soul, this is truth because it know its fullness and
cannot conceive of any part from which it is excluded.
92
The Soul knows that the consciousness of all its brothers is included in its
own, as it is included in God. The power of the whole Sonship and of its Creator
is therefore the Soul’s own fullness, rendering its creations equally whole and
equal in perfection.The ego cannot prevail against a totality which includes God,
and any totality must include God. Everything He created is given all His power
because it is part of Him and shares His Being with Him. Creating is the opposite
of loss, as blessing is the opposite of sacrifice. Being must be extended.That is how
it retains the knowledge of itself.
93
The Soul yearns to share its being as its Creator did. Created by sharing,
its will is to create. It does not wish to contain God but to extend His Being.
The extension of God’s Being is the Soul’s only function. Its fullness cannot be
contained any more than can the fullness of its Creator. Fullness is extension.The
ego’s whole thought system blocks extension and thus blocks your only function.
It therefore blocks your joy, and that is why you perceive yourselves as unfulfilled.
Unless you create, you are unfulfilled; but God does not know of unfulfillment,
and therefore you must create. You may not know your own creations, but this
can no more interfere with their reality than your unawareness of your Soul can
interfere with its being.
94
The Kingdom is forever extending because it is in the Mind of God. You
do not know your joy because you do not know your own self-fullness. Exclude
any part of the Kingdom from yourself, and you are not whole. A split mind
cannot perceive its fullness and needs the miracle of its wholeness to dawn upon
it and heal it. This reawakens the wholeness in it and restores it to the Kingdom
because of its acceptance of wholeness. The full appreciation of its self-fullness
makes selfishness impossible and extension inevitable.That is why there is perfect
peace in the Kingdom. Every Soul is fulfilling its function, and only complete
fulfillment is peace.
91
140
Extension of the Kingdom
Insanity appears to add to reality, but no one would claim that what it adds is
true. Insanity is therefore the non-extension of truth, which blocks joy because it
blocks creation and thus blocks self-fulfillment.The unfulfilled must be depressed
because their self-fullness is unknown to them. Your creations are protected for
you because the Holy Spirit, Who is in your mind, knows of them and can bring
them into your awareness whenever you will let Him. They are there as part of
your own being because your fulfillment includes them. The creations of every
Son of God are yours since every creation belongs to everyone, being created for
the Sonship as a whole.
96
You have not failed to add to the inheritance of the Sons of God and thus
have not failed to secure it for yourselves. If it was the Will of God to give it to
you, He gave it forever. If it was His Will that you have it forever, He gave you the
means for keeping it, and you have done so. Disobeying God’s Will is meaningful
only to the insane. In truth it is impossible. Your self-fullness is as boundless as
God’s. Like His, it extends forever and in perfect peace. Its radiance is so intense
that it creates in perfect joy, and only the whole can be born of its wholeness.
97
Be confident that you have never lost your identity and the extensions which
maintain it in wholeness and peace. Miracles are an expression of this confidence.
They are reflections both of your own proper identification with your brothers
and of your own awareness that your identification is maintained by extension.
The miracle is a lesson in total perception. By including any part of totality in
the lesson, you have included the whole. You have said that when you write of
the Kingdom and your creations which belong in it, you are describing what
you do not know. That is true in a sense, but no more true than your failure to
acknowledge the whole result of the ego’s premises.The Kingdom is the result of
premises, just as this world is.
98
You have carried the ego’s reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is total
confusion about everything.Yet you do not really believe this, or you could not possibly
maintain it. If you really saw this result, you could not want it. The only reason
why you could possibly want any part of it is because you do not see the whole of
it.You are willing to look at the ego’s premises but not at their logical outcome. Is
it not possible that you have done the same thing with the premises of God?
99
Your creations are the logical outcome of His premises. His thinking has
established them for you. They are therefore there, exactly where they belong.
They belong in your mind as part of your identification with His, but your state
of mind and your recognition of what is in your mind depends at any given
moment on what you believe about your mind. Whatever these beliefs may be,
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xii. The
they are the premises which will determine what you accept into your mind. It is
surely clear that you can both accept into your mind what is not really there and
deny what is. Neither of these possibilities requires further elaboration here, but
both are clearly indefensible, even if you elect to defend them.
100
Yet the function which God Himself gave your minds through His you
may deny, but you cannot prevent. It is the logical outcome of what you are. The
ability to see a logical outcome depends on the willingness to see it, but its truth
has nothing to do with your willingness at all. Truth is God’s Will. Share His Will,
and you share what He knows. Deny His Will as yours, and you are denying His
Kingdom and yours.The Holy Spirit will direct you only so as to avoid pain.The
undoing of pain must obviously avoid pain. Surely no one would object to this
goal if he recognized it. The problem is not whether what the Holy Spirit says is
true, but whether you want to listen to what He says.
xi. The
Confusion
of
Strength
and Weakness
You no more recognize what is painful than you know what is joyful and are
in fact very apt to confuse the two.The Holy Spirit’s main function is to teach you
to tell them apart. However strange it may seem that this is necessary, it obviously is.
The reason is equally obvious. What is joyful to you is painful to the ego and, as
long as you are in doubt about what you are, you will be confused about joy and
pain. This confusion is the cause of the whole idea of sacrifice. Obey the Holy
Spirit, and you will be giving up the ego. But you will be sacrificing nothing. On
the contrary, you will be gaining everything. If you believed this, there would be
no conflict.
102
That is why you need to demonstrate the obvious to yourselves. It is not
obvious to you.You believe that doing the opposite of God’s Will can be better for
you.You also believe that it is possible to do the opposite of God’s Will.Therefore,
you believe that an impossible choice is open to you and one which is both very
fearful and very desirable.Yet God wills. He does not wish. Your will is as powerful
as His because it is His. The ego’s wishes do not mean anything, because the ego
wishes for the impossible.You can wish for the impossible, but you can will only
with God. This is the ego’s weakness and your strength.
103
The Holy Spirit always sides with you and with your strength. As long as you
avoid His guidance in any way, you want to be weak.Yet weakness is frightening.
What else, then, can this decision mean except that you want to be fearful? The
Holy Spirit never asks for sacrifice, but the ego always does.When you are confused
about this very clear distinction in motivation, it can only be due to projection.
101
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State of Grace
Projection of this kind is a confusion in motivation and, given this confusion, trust
becomes impossible.
104
No one obeys gladly a guide he does not trust, but this does not mean
that the guide is untrustworthy. In this case, it always means that the follower is.
However, this too is merely a matter of his own belief. Believing that he can
betray, he believes that everything can betray him. Yet this is only because he
has elected to follow false guidance. Unable to follow this guidance without fear, he
associates fear with guidance and refuses to follow any guidance at all. The Holy
Spirit is perfectly trustworthy, as you are. God Himself trusts you, and therefore
your trustworthiness is beyond question. It will always remain beyond question,
however much you may question it.
105
We said before that you are the Will of God. His Will is not an idle wish, and
your identification with His Will is not optional, since it is what you are. Sharing
His Will with me is not really open to choice, though it may seem to be. The
whole separation lies in this fallacy. The only way out of the fallacy is to decide
that you do not have to decide anything. Everything has been given you by God’s
decision. That is His Will, and you can not undo it. Even the relinquishment of
your false decision-making prerogative, which the ego guards so jealously, is not
accomplished by your wish. It was accomplished for you by the Will of God,Who
has not left you comfortless. His Voice will teach you how to distinguish between
pain and joy and will lead you out of the confusion which you have made. There
is no confusion in the mind of a Son of God whose will must be the Will of the
Father because the Father’s Will is His Son.
106
Miracles are in accord with the Will of God Whose Will you do not know
because you are confused about what you will. This means that you are confused
about what you are. If you are God’s Will and do not accept His Will, you are
denying joy. The miracle is therefore a lesson in what joy is. Being a lesson in
sharing, it is a lesson in love, which is joy. Every miracle is thus a lesson in truth,
and by offering truth you are learning the difference between pain and joy.
xii. The
State
of
Grace
The Holy Spirit will always guide you truly because your joy is His. This
is His Will for everyone because He speaks for the Kingdom of God which
is joy. Following Him is therefore the easiest thing in the world and the only
thing that is easy, because it is not of the world and is therefore natural. The
world goes against your nature, being out of accord with God’s laws. The world
perceives orders of difficulty in everything. This is because the ego perceives
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143
nothing as wholly desirable. By demonstrating to yourselves that there is no order
of difficulty in miracles, you will convince yourselves that in your natural state
there is no difficulty because it is a state of grace.
108
Grace is the natural state of every Son of God. When he is not in a state of
grace, he is out of his natural environment and does not function well. Everything
he does becomes a strain because he was not created for the environment that he
has made. He therefore cannot adapt to it, nor can he adapt it to him. There is no
point in trying. A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is with God.That
is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is
where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because
his own worth is beyond anything he can make.
109
Consider the kingdom you have made and judge its worth fairly. Is it worthy
to be a home for a Child of God? Does it protect his peace and shine love upon
him? Does it keep his heart untouched by fear and allow him to give always
without any sense of loss? Does it teach him that this giving is his joy and that
God Himself thanks him for his giving? That is the only environment in which
you can be happy. You cannot make it any more than you can make yourselves.
It has been created for you, as you were created for it. God watches over His
Children and denies them nothing.Yet when they deny Him, they do not know
this because they deny themselves everything.
110
You who could give the love of God to everything you see and touch and
remember are literally denying Heaven to yourselves. I call upon you again to
remember that I have chosen you to teach the Kingdom to the Kingdom. There
are no exceptions to this lesson, because the lack of exceptions is the lesson. Every
Son who returns to the Kingdom with this lesson in his heart has healed the
Sonship and given thanks to God. Everyone who learns this lesson has become
the perfect teacher because he has learned it of the Holy Spirit, Who wants to
teach him everything He knows. When a mind has only light, it knows only light.
Its own radiance shines all around it and extends out into the darkness of other
minds, transforming them into majesty.
111
The Majesty of God is there for you to recognize and appreciate and know.
Perceiving the Majesty of God as your brother is to accept your own inheritance.
God gives only equally. If you recognize His gift in anyone else, you have
acknowledged what He has given you. Nothing is so easy to perceive as truth.
This is the perception which is immediate, clear, and natural. You have trained
yourselves not to see it, and this has been very difficult for you. Out of your natural
environment you may well ask, “What is truth?” since truth is the environment
144
xii. The
State of Grace
by which and for which you were created.
112
You do not know yourselves because you do not know your Creator.You do
not know your creations because you do not know your brothers, who created
them with you. We said before that only the whole Sonship is worthy to be cocreator with God because only the whole Sonship can create like Him.Whenever
you heal a brother by recognizing his worth, you are acknowledging his power to
create and yours. He cannot have lost what you recognize, and you must have the
glory you see in him. He is a co-creator with God with you. Deny his creative
power, and you are denying yours and that of God, Who created you. You cannot
deny part of truth. You do not know your creations because you do not know
their creator.You do not know yourselves because you do not know yours.
113
Your creations cannot establish your reality any more than you can establish
God’s. But you can know both. Being is known by sharing. Because God shared
His Being with you, you can know Him. But you must also know all He created,
to know what they have shared. Without your Father, you will not know your
fatherhood. The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who
are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you
will know all creation.
145
iii. The
ii. The
Direction
of the
Rationale For Choice
Curriculum
Those whom you perceive as opponents are part of your peace, which you
are giving up by attacking them. How can you have what you give up? You share
to have, but you do not give it up yourself. When you give up peace, you are
excluding yourself from it. This is a condition which is so alien to the Kingdom
that you cannot understand the state which prevails within it.Your past learning
must have taught you the wrong things simply because it has not made you
happy. On this basis alone, its value should be questioned.
5
If learning aims at change, and that is always its purpose, are you satisfied with
the changes your learning has brought you? Dissatisfaction with learning outcomes
must be a sign of learning failure since it means that you did not get what you
want. The curriculum of the Atonement is the opposite of the curriculum you
have established for yourselves, but so is its outcome. If the outcome of yours has
made you unhappy and if you want a different one, a change in the curriculum
is obviously necessary.
6
The first change that must be introduced is a change in direction. A meaningful
curriculum cannot be inconsistent. If it is planned by two teachers, each believing
in diametrically opposed ideas, it cannot be integrated. If it is carried out by these
two teachers simultaneously, each one merely interferes with the other. This leads
to fluctuation, but not to change. The volatile have no direction. They cannot
choose one because they cannot relinquish the other, even if the other does
not exist. Their conflicted curriculum teaches them all directions exist and gives
them no rationale for choice.
7
The total senselessness of such a curriculum must be fully recognized before
a real change in direction becomes possible. You cannot learn simultaneously
from two teachers who are in total disagreement about everything. Their joint
curriculum presents an impossible learning task. They are teaching you entirely
different things in entirely different ways, which might be possible except for the
crucial fact that both are teaching you about yourself. Your reality is unaffected by
both, but if you listen to both your mind will be split about what your reality is.
4
eight
The Journey Back
i.
Y
Introduction
ou are hampered in your progress by your demands to know what you
do not know. This is actually a way of holding on to deprivation. You
cannot reasonably object to following instructions in a course for knowing on
the grounds that you do not know. The need for the course is implicit in your
objection. Knowledge is not the motivation for learning this course. Peace is. As
the prerequisite for knowledge, peace must be learned. This is only because those
who are in conflict are not peaceful, and peace is the condition of knowledge
because it is the condition of the Kingdom.
8:2
Knowledge will be restored when you meet its conditions. This is not a
bargain made by God, Who makes no bargains. It is merely the result of your
misuse of His laws on behalf of a will that is not His. Knowledge is His Will. If
you are opposing His Will, how can you have knowledge? I have told you what
knowledge offers you, but it is clear that you do not regard this as wholly desirable.
If you did, you would hardly be willing to throw it away so readily when the ego
asks for your allegiance. The distraction of the ego seems to interfere with your
learning, but the ego has no power to distract you unless you give it the power.
3
The ego’s voice is an hallucination.You cannot expect it to say, “I am not real.”
Hallucinations are inaccurate perceptions of reality. Yet you are not asked to dispel
them alone.You are merely asked to evaluate them in terms of their results to you. If
you do not want them on the basis of loss of peace, they will be removed from your
mind for you. Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war does deprive you
of peace.Yet in this war there is no opponent. This is the reinterpretation of reality
which you must make to secure peace, and the only one you need ever make.
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iii. The
Rationale For Choice
There is a rationale for choice. Only one Teacher knows what your reality is. If
learning that is the purpose of the curriculum, you must learn it of Him. The ego
does not know what it is trying to teach. It is trying to teach you what you are
without knowing it. The ego is expert only in confusion. It does not understand
8
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iv. The
Chapter 8: THE Journey Back
anything else. As a teacher, then, it is totally confused and totally confusing. Even if
you could disregard the Holy Spirit entirely, which is quite impossible, you could
learn nothing from the ego because the ego knows nothing.
9
Is there any possible reason for choosing a teacher such as this? Does the total
disregard of anything it teaches make anything but sense? Is this the teacher to
whom a Son of God should turn to find himself? The ego has never given you a
sensible answer to anything. Simply on the grounds of your own experience with
the ego’s teaching, should not this alone disqualify it as your future teacher? Yet
the ego has done more harm to your learning than this alone. Learning is joyful
if it leads you along your natural path and facilitates the development of what
you have.When you are taught against your nature, however, you will lose by your
learning because your learning will imprison you.Your will is in your nature and
therefore cannot go against it.
10
The ego cannot teach you anything as long as your will is free because you
will not listen to it. It is not your will to be imprisoned because your will is free.
That is why the ego is the denial of free will. It is never God who coerces you
because He shares His Will with you. His Voice teaches only His Will, but that is
not the Holy Spirit’s lesson because that is what you are. The lesson is that your
will and God’s cannot be out of accord because they are one. This is the undoing
of everything the ego tries to teach. It is not, then, only the direction of the
curriculum which must be unconflicted, but also the content.
11
The ego wants to teach you that you want to oppose God’s Will.This unnatural
lesson cannot be learned, but the attempt to learn it is a violation of your own
freedom and makes you afraid of your will because it is free. The Holy Spirit
opposes any imprisoning of the will of a Son of God, knowing that the will of the
Son is the Father’s. The Holy Spirit leads you steadily along the path of freedom,
teaching you how to disregard or look beyond everything that would hold you
back.
12
We said before that the Holy Spirit teaches you the difference between pain
and joy. That is the same as saying that He teaches you the difference between
imprisonment and freedom. You cannot make this distinction without Him. That
is because you have taught yourself that imprisonment is freedom. Believing
them to be the same, how can you tell them apart? Can you ask the part of your
mind that taught you to believe they are the same to teach you the difference
between them?
13
The Holy Spirit’s teaching takes only one direction and has only one goal. His
direction is freedom, and His goal is God.Yet he cannot conceive of God without
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Holy Encounter
you because it is not God’s Will to be without you. When you have learned that
your will is God’s, you could no more will to be without Him than He could will
to be without you. This is freedom and this is joy. Deny yourself this and you are
denying God His Kingdom because He created you for this. When we said, “All
power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His,” this is what we meant.
14
The Will of God is without limit, and all power and glory lie within it. It is
boundless in strength and in love and in peace. It has no boundaries because its
extension is unlimited, and it encompasses all things because it created all things.
By creating all things, it made them part of itself. You are the Will of God because
this is how you were created. Because your Creator creates only like Himself, you
are like Him. You are part of Him who is all power and glory and are therefore
as unlimited as He is.
15
To what else except all power and glory can the Holy Spirit appeal to restore
God’s Kingdom? His appeal, then, is merely to what the Kingdom is and for
its own acknowledgment of what it is. When you acknowledge this you bring
the acknowledgment automatically to everyone because you have acknowledged
everyone. By your recognition you awaken theirs, and through theirs yours is
extended. Awakening runs easily and gladly through the Kingdom in answer to
the Call of God. This is the natural response of every Son of God to the Voice of
his Creator because it is the Voice for His creations and for His own extension.
iv. The
Holy Encounter
Glory be to God in the highest and to you because He has so willed it. Ask
and it shall be given you because it has already been given. Ask for light and learn
that you are light. If you want understanding and enlightenment, you will learn it
because your will to learn it is your decision to listen to the Teacher who knows of
light and can therefore teach it to you. There is no limit on your learning because
there is no limit on your minds. There is no limit on His will to teach because He
was created to teach. Knowing His function perfectly, He wills to fulfill it perfectly
because that is His joy and yours.
17
To fulfill the Will of God perfectly is the only joy and peace that can be
fully known because it is the only function that can be fully experienced. When
this is accomplished, then, there is no other experience. Yet the wish for other
experience will block its accomplishment because God’s Will cannot be forced
upon you, being an experience of total willingness. The Holy Spirit knows how to
teach this, but you do not. That is why you need Him, and why God gave Him to
you. Only His teaching will release your will to God’s, uniting it with His power
16
149
v. The
and glory and establishing them as yours. You share them as God shares them
because this is the natural outcome of their being.
18
The Will of Father and of the Son are one together by their extension. Their
extension is the result of their oneness, holding their unity together by extending
their joint will. This is perfect creation by the perfectly created in union with
Perfect Creator. The Father must give fatherhood to His Son because His own
Fatherhood must be extended outward. You who belong in God have the holy
function of extending His Fatherhood by placing no limits upon it. Let the
Holy Spirit teach you how to do this, for you will know what it means of God
Himself.
19
When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him,
you will see yourself. As you treat him, you will treat yourself. As you think of
him, you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself
or lose sight of yourself.Whenever two Sons of God meet, they are given another
chance at salvation. Do not leave anyone without giving salvation to him and
receiving it yourself, for I am always there with you in remembrance of you.
20
The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is know
thyself. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and for the
power and glory he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone, you have
another opportunity to find them.Your power and glory are in him because they
are yours. The ego tries to find them in yourself because it does not know where
to look. The Holy Spirit teaches you that if you look only at yourself, you cannot
find yourself because that is not what you are.
21
Whenever you are with a brother, you are learning what you are because you
are teaching what you are. He will respond either with pain or with joy, depending
on which teacher you are following. He will be imprisoned or released according
to your decision, and so will you. Never forget your responsibility to him because it
is your responsibility to yourself. Give him his place in the Kingdom, and you will
have yours. The Kingdom cannot be found alone, and you who are the Kingdom
cannot find yourselves alone.
22
To achieve the goal of the curriculum, then, you cannot listen to the ego. Its
purpose is to defeat its own goal. The ego does not know this because it does not
know anything. But you can know this, and you will know it if you are willing
to look at what the ego has made of you. This is your responsibility because once
you have really done this you will accept the Atonement for yourself. What other
choice could you make? Having made this choice, you will begin to learn and
understand why you have believed that when you met someone else, you had
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Light of the World
thought that he was someone else. And every holy encounter in which you enter
fully will teach you this is not so.
23
You can encounter only part of yourself because you are part of God, Who
is everything. His power and glory are everywhere, and you cannot be excluded
from them. The ego teaches that your strength is in you alone. The Holy Spirit
teaches that all strength is in God and therefore in you. God wills no one suffer. He
does not will anyone to suffer for a wrong decision, including you. That is why
He has given you the means for undoing it. Through His power and glory, all
your wrong decisions are undone, completely releasing you and your brothers from
every imprisoning thought any part of the Sonship has accepted.Wrong decisions
have no power because they are not true. The imprisonment which they seem to
produce is no more true than they are.
24
Power and glory belong to God alone. So do you. God gives whatever belongs
to Him because He gives of Himself, and everything belongs to Him. Giving of
your self is the function He gave you. Fulfilling it perfectly will teach you what
you have of Him, and this will teach you what you are in Him. You cannot be
powerless to do this because this is your power. Glory is God’s gift to you because
that is what He is. See this glory everywhere to learn what you are.
v. The
Light
of the World
If God’s Will for you is complete peace and joy, unless you experience only
this you must be refusing to acknowledge His Will. His Will does not vacillate,
being changeless forever. When you are not at peace, it can only be because you
do not believe you are in Him.Yet He is all in all. His peace is complete, and you
must be included in it. His laws govern you because they govern everything. You
cannot exempt yourself from His laws, although you can disobey them.Yet if you
do, and only if you do, you will feel lonely and helpless because you are denying
yourself everything.
26
I am come as a light into a world that does deny itself everything. It does this
simply by dissociating itself from everything. It is therefore an illusion of isolation,
maintained by fear of the same loneliness which is its illusion. I have told you that
I am with you always, even to the end of the world. That is why I am the light of
the world. If I am with you in the loneliness of the world, the loneliness is gone. You
cannot maintain the illusion of loneliness if you are not alone. My purpose, then,
is to overcome the world. I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because
of what it is.
25
151
Light does not attack darkness, but it does shine it away. If my light goes
with you everywhere, you shine it away with me. The light becomes ours, and you
cannot abide in darkness any more than darkness can abide wherever you go.The
remembrance of me is the remembrance of yourself and of Him Who sent me
to you. You were in darkness until God’s Will was done completely by any part
of the Sonship. When this was done, it was perfectly accomplished by all. How
else could it be perfectly accomplished? My mission was simply to unite the will
of the Sonship with the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father’s Will
myself. This is the awareness I came to give you, and your problem in accepting
it is the problem of this world. Dispelling it is salvation, and in this sense I am the
salvation of the world.
28
The world must despise and reject me because the world is the belief that
love is impossible. Your reactions to me are the reactions of the world to God.
If you will accept the fact that I am with you, you are denying the world and
accepting God. My will is His, and your will to hear me is the decision to hear His
Voice and abide in His Will. As God sent me to you, so will I send you to others,
and I will go to them with you so we can teach them peace and union.
29
Do you not think the world needs peace as much as you do? Do you not
want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive it? For unless you do,
you will not receive it. If you will to have it of me, you must give it. Rehabilitation
does not come from anyone else. You can have guidance from without, but you
must accept it from within. The guidance must be what you want, or it will be
meaningless to you. That is why rehabilitation is a collaborative venture.
30
I can tell you what to do, but this will not help you unless you collaborate by
believing that I know what to do. Only then will your mind choose to follow me.
Without your will, you cannot be rehabilitated. Motivation to be healed is the crucial
factor in rehabilitation. Without this you are deciding against healing, and your
veto of my will for you makes healing impossible. If healing is our joint will, unless
our wills are joined you cannot be healed.This is obvious when you consider what
healing is for. Healing is the way in which the separation is overcome. Separation
is overcome by union. It cannot be overcome by separating.
31
The will to unite must be unequivocal, or the will itself is divided or not
whole. Your will is the means by which you determine your own condition
because will is the mechanism of decision. It is the power by which you separate
or join and experience pain or joy accordingly. My will cannot overcome yours
because yours is as powerful as mine. If it were not so, the Sons of God would be
unequal. All things are possible through our joint will, but my will alone cannot
27
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v. The
Light of the World
help you. Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against
it. I cannot will what God does not will. I can offer you my will to make yours
invincible by this sharing, but I cannot oppose yours without competing with it
and thereby violating God’s Will for you.
32
Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can
oppose His. God gave your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in
honor of His. If you want to be like me, I will help you, knowing that we are
alike. If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind. I can
teach you, but only you can choose to listen to my teaching. How else can it be,
if God’s Kingdom is freedom? Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of any
kind, and the perfect equality of all God’s Sons cannot be recognized through the
dominion of one will over another. God’s Sons are equal in will, all being the Will
of their Father. This is the only lesson I came to teach, knowing that it is true.
33
When your will is not mine, it is not our Father’s. This means that you have
imprisoned yours and have not let it be free. Of yourselves you can do nothing
because of yourselves you are nothing. I am nothing without the Father, and you
are nothing without me because by denying the Father you deny yourself. I will
always remember you, and in my remembrance of you lies your remembrance of
yourself. In our remembrance of each other lies our remembrance of God, and in
this remembrance lies your freedom because your freedom is in Him. Join then
with me in praise of Him and you whom He created.This is our gift of gratitude
to Him, which He will share with all His creations to whom He gives equally
whatever is acceptable to Him. Because it is acceptable to Him, it is the gift of
freedom, which is His Will for all His Sons. By offering freedom, you will be free.
34
Freedom is the only gift you can offer to God’s Sons, being an acknowledgment
of what they are and what He is. Freedom is creation because it is love. What you
seek to imprison you do not love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison anyone
including yourself, you do not love him, and you cannot identify with him.When
you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and
with the Father.Your identification is with the Father and with the Son. It cannot
be with one and not the other. If you are part of one, you must be part of the
other because they are one.
35
The Holy Trinity is holy because it is one. If you exclude yourself from this
union, you are perceiving the Holy Trinity as separated. You must be included
in It because It is everything. Unless you take your place in It and fulfill your
function as part of It, It is as bereft as you are. No part of It can be imprisoned if
Its truth is to be known. Can you be separated from your identification and be
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vi. The
at peace? Dissociation is not a solution; it is a delusion. The delusional believe that
truth will assail them, and so they do not see it because they prefer the delusion.
Judging truth as something they do not want, they perceive deception and block
knowledge.
36
Help them by offering them your unified will on their behalf, as I am offering
you mine on yours. Alone we can do nothing, but together our wills fuse into
something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts. By not being
separate, the Will of God is established in ours and as ours. This Will is invincible
because it is undivided. The undivided will of the Sonship is the perfect creator,
being wholly in the likeness of God,Whose Will it is. You cannot be exempt from
it if you are to understand what it is and what you are. By separating your will from
mine, you are exempting yourself from the Will of God, which is yourself.
37
Yet to heal is still to make whole. Therefore, to heal is to unite with those
who are like you, because perceiving this likeness is to recognize the Father.
If your perfection is in Him and only in Him, how can you know it without
recognizing Him? The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself.There is
no separation of God and His creation.You will learn this as you learn that there
is no separation of your will and mine. Let the love of God shine upon you by your
acceptance of me. My reality is yours and His. By joining your will with mine,
you are signifying your awareness that the Will of God is one.
38
God’s Oneness and ours are not separate, because His Oneness encompasses
ours. To join with me is to restore His power to you because we are sharing it. I
offer you only the recognition of His power in you, but in that lies all truth. As we
unite, we unite with Him. Glory be to the union of God and His holy Sons! All
glory lies in them because they are united. The miracles we do bear witness to the
Will of the Father for His Son and to our joy in uniting with His Will for us.
39
When you unite with me, you are uniting without the ego because I have
renounced the ego in myself and therefore cannot unite with yours. Our union is
therefore the way to renounce the ego in yourself. The truth in both of us is beyond
the ego. By willing that, you have gone beyond it toward truth. Our success in
transcending the ego is guaranteed by God, and I can share this confidence for
both of us and all of us. I bring God’s peace back to all His Children because I
received it of Him for us all. Nothing can prevail against our united wills because
nothing can prevail against God’s. Would you know the Will of God for you? Ask
it of me who knows it for you, and you will find it. I will deny you nothing, as
God denies me nothing.
40
Ours is simply the journey back to God, Who is our home. Whenever
154
Power of Joint Decision
fear intrudes anywhere along the road to peace, it is always because the ego
has attempted to join the journey with us and cannot do so. Sensing defeat and
angered by it, the ego regards itself as rejected and becomes retaliative. You are
invulnerable to its retaliation because I am with you. On this journey, you have
chosen me as your companion instead of the ego. Do not try to hold on to both,
or you will try to go in different directions and will lose the way.
41
The ego’s way is not mine, but it is also not yours. The Holy Spirit has one
direction for all minds, and the one He taught me is yours. Let us not lose sight
of His direction through illusions, for only illusions of another direction can
obscure the one for which God’s Voice speaks in all of us. Never accord the ego
the power to interfere with the journey because it has none, since the journey is
the way to what is true. Leave all deception behind and reach beyond all attempts
of the ego to hold you back. I go before you because I am beyond the ego. Reach
therefore for my hand because you want to transcend the ego. My will will never
be wanting, and if you want to share it you will. I give it willingly and gladly
because I need you as much as you need me.
vi. The
Power
of Joint
Decision
We are the joint will of the Sonship, whose wholeness is for all. We begin
the journey back by setting out together and gather in our brothers as we continue
together. Every gain in our strength is offered for all, so they too can lay aside
their weakness and add their strength to us. God’s welcome waits for us all, and
He will welcome us as I am welcoming you. Forget not the Kingdom of God for
anything the world has to offer.The world can add nothing to the power and the
glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they
behold it.You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true.
43
I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours. If it were,
you would have destroyed yourselves. Yet God did not will the destruction of
His creations, having created them for eternity. His Will has saved you, not from
yourselves, but from your illusions of yourselves. He has saved you for yourselves. Let
us glorify Him whom the world denies, for over His Kingdom, it has no power.
No one created by God can find joy in anything except the eternal. That is not
because he is deprived of anything else, but because nothing else is worthy of him.
What God and His Sons create is eternal, and in this and this only is their joy.
44
Listen to the story of the prodigal son, and learn what God’s treasure is
and yours: This son of a loving father left his home and thought he squandered
everything for nothing of any value, although he did not know its worthlessness
42
155
vii. Communication and the
at the time. He was ashamed to return to his father because he thought he had
hurt him. Yet when he came home, the father welcomed him with joy because
only the son himself was his father’s treasure. He wanted nothing else.
45
God wants only His Son because His Son is His only treasure.You want your
creations as He wants His. Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created
in gratitude for your creation.They do not leave you, any more than you have left
your Creator, but they extend your creation as God extended Himself to you. Can
the creations of God Himself take joy in what is not real? And what is real except
the creations of God and those which are created like His? Your creations love
you as your Soul loves your Father for the gift of creation. There is no other gift
which is eternal, and therefore there is no other gift which is true.
46
How, then, can you accept anything else or give anything else and expect joy
in return? And what else but joy would you want? You made neither yourself nor
your function.You made only the decision to be unworthy of both.Yet you could
not make yourself unworthy because you are the treasure of God. What He values
is valuable. There can be no question of its worth because its value lies in God’s
sharing Himself with it and establishing its value forever.
47
Your function is to add to God’s treasure by creating yours. His Will to you is
His Will for you. He would not withhold creation from you because His joy is
in it.You cannot find joy except as God does. His joy lay in creating you, and He
extends His Fatherhood to you so that you can extend yourself as He did.You do
not understand this because you do not understand Him. No one who does not
know his function can understand it, and no one can know his function unless
he knows who he is. Creation is the Will of God. His Will created you to create.
Your will was not created separate from His, and so it wills as He wills.
48
An “unwilling will” does not mean anything, being a contradiction in terms
which actually leaves nothing. When you think you are unwilling to will with
God, you are not thinking. God’s Will is thought. It cannot be contradicted by
thought. God does not contradict Himself, and His Sons, who are like Him, cannot
contradict themselves or Him.Yet their thought is so powerful that they can even
imprison the minds of God’s Sons if they so choose.This choice does make the Son’s
function unknown to him, but never to his Creator. And because it is not unknown
to his Creator, it is forever knowable to him.
49
There is no question but one you should ever ask of yourself— “Do I want
to know my Father’s Will for me?” He will not hide it. He has revealed it to me
because I asked it of Him and learned of what He had already given. Our function
is to function together because apart from each other we cannot function at all.
156
Ego-Body Equation
The whole power of God’s Son lies in all of us, but not in any of us alone. God
would not have us be alone because He does not will to be alone.That is why He
created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him.
50
Our creations are as holy as we are, and we are the Sons of God Himself
and therefore as holy as He is. Through our creations, we extend our love and
thus increase the joy of the Holy Trinity. You do not understand this for a very
simple reason. You who are God’s own treasure do not regard yourselves as
valuable. Given this belief, you cannot understand anything. I share with God the
knowledge of the value He puts upon you. My devotion to you is of Him, being
born of my knowledge of myself and Him. We cannot be separated. Whom God
has joined cannot be separated, and God has joined all His Sons with Himself.
Can you be separated from your life and your being?
51
The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where
you are always and what you are forever. It is a journey without distance to a goal
that has never changed.Truth can only be experienced. It cannot be described, and
it cannot be explained. I can make you aware of the conditions of truth, but the
experience is of God. Together we can meet its conditions, but truth will dawn
upon you of itself.
52
What God has willed for you is yours. He has given His Will to His treasure,
whose treasure it is.Your heart lies where your treasure is, as His does.You who
are beloved of God are wholly blessed. Learn this of me, and free the holy will of
all those who are as blessed as you are.
vii.
Communication
and the
Ego-Body Equation
Attack is always physical. When attack in any form enters your mind, you are
equating yourself with a body. This is the ego’s interpretation of the body. You do
not have to attack physically to accept this interpretation. You are accepting it
simply by the belief that attack can get you something you want. If you did not
believe this, the idea of attack would have no appeal for you. When you equate
yourself with a body, you will always experience depression. When a Child of
God thinks of himself in this way, he is belittling himself and seeing his brothers
as similarly belittled. Since he can find himself only in them, he has cut himself
off from salvation.
54
Remember that the Holy Spirit interprets the body only as a means of
communication. Being the communication link between God and His separated
Sons, the Holy Spirit interprets everything you have made in the light of what
53
157
vii. Communication and the
He is. The ego separates through the body. The Holy Spirit reaches through it to
others.You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does because you do
not interpret their bodies and yours solely as a means of joining their minds and
uniting them with yours and mine. This interpretation of the body will change
your mind entirely about its value. Of itself it has none.
55
If you use the body for attack, it is harmful to you. If you use it only to reach
the minds of those who believe they are bodies and teach them through the body
that this is not so, you will begin to understand the power of the mind that is in
both of you. If you use the body for this and only for this, you cannot use it for
attack. In the service of uniting, it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion,
which has value until communion is. This is God’s way of making unlimited
what you have limited. The Holy Spirit does not see the body as you do because
He knows the only reality anything can have is the service it can render God on
behalf of the function He has given it.
56
Communication ends separation. Attack promotes it. The body is beautiful or
ugly, holy or savage, helpful or harmful, according to the use to which it is put.
And in the body of another you will see the use to which you have put yours. If
the body becomes for you a means which you give to the Holy Spirit to use on
behalf of union of the Sonship, you will not see anything physical except as what
it is. Use it for truth, and you will see it truly. Misuse it, and you will misunderstand
it because you have already done so by misusing it. Interpret anything apart from
the Holy Spirit, and you will mistrust it. This will lead you to hatred and attack
and loss of peace.
57
Yet all loss comes only from your own misunderstanding. Loss of any kind
is impossible. When you look upon a brother as a physical entity, his power and
glory are lost to you, and so are yours. You have attacked him, but you must have
attacked yourself first. Do not see him this way for your own salvation, which
must bring him his. Do not allow him to belittle himself in your mind, but give
him freedom from his belief in littleness and thus escape from yours. As part of
you, he is holy. As part of me, you are. To communicate with part of God Himself
is to reach beyond the Kingdom to its Creator through His Voice, which He has
established as part of you.
58
Rejoice, then, that of yourselves you can do nothing.You are not of yourselves.
He of Whom you are has willed your power and glory for you, with which you can
perfectly accomplish His holy Will for you when you so will it yourself. He has
not withdrawn His gifts from you, but you have withdrawn them from Him. Let
no Son of God remain hidden for His Name’s sake because His Name is yours.
158
Ego-Body Equation
Remember that the Bible says, “The Word (or thought) was made flesh.”
Strictly speaking this is impossible, since it seems to involve the translation of one
order of reality into another. Different orders of reality merely appear to exist, just
as different orders of miracles do. Thought cannot be made into flesh except by
belief, since thought is not physical.Yet thought is communication, for which the
body can be used. This is the only natural use to which it can be put. To use the
body unnaturally is to lose sight of the Holy Spirit’s purpose and thus to confuse
the goal of His curriculum.
60
There is nothing so frustrating to a learner as to be placed in a curriculum
which he cannot learn. His sense of adequacy suffers, and he must become
depressed. Being faced with an impossible learning situation, regardless of why it
is impossible, is the most depressing thing in the world. In fact, it is ultimately why
the world is depressing. The Holy Spirit’s curriculum is never depressing because
it is a curriculum of joy.Whenever the reaction to learning is depression, it is only
because the goal of the curriculum has been lost sight of.
61
In the world, not even the body is perceived as whole. Its purpose is seen
as fragmented into many functions which bear little or no relationship to each
other, so that it appears to be ruled by chaos. Guided by the ego, it is. Guided
by the Holy Spirit, it is not. It becomes only a means by which the part of the
mind you have separated from your Soul can reach beyond its distortions and
return to the Soul. The ego’s temple thus becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit,
where devotion to Him replaces devotion to the ego. In this sense, the body does
become a temple to God because His Voice abides in it by directing the use to
which it is put.
62
Healing is the result of using the body solely for communication. Since this
is natural, it heals by making whole, which is also natural. All mind is whole,
and the belief that part of it is physical, or not mind, is a fragmented (or sick)
interpretation. Mind cannot be made physical, but it can be made manifest through
the physical if it uses the body to go beyond itself. By reaching out, the mind
extends itself. It does not stop at the body, for if it does, it is blocked in its purpose.
A mind which has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack
because it has turned against itself.
63
The removal of the blocks, then, is the only way to guarantee help and healing.
Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working through
the body but not in it. If the mind believes the body is its goal, it will distort its
perception of the body and, by blocking its own extension beyond it, will induce
illness by fostering separation. Perceiving the body as a separate entity cannot but
59
159
viii. The
foster illness because it is not true. A medium of communication will lose its
usefulness if it is used for anything else. To use a medium of communication as a
medium of attack is an obvious confusion in purpose.
64
To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. How can you do both
simultaneously with the same thing and not suffer? Perception of the body can
be unified only by one purpose.This releases the mind from the temptation to see
the body in many lights and gives it over entirely to the One Light in Which it can
be really understood at all. To confuse a learning device with a curriculum goal
is a fundamental confusion. Learning can hardly be arrested at its own aids with
hope of understanding either the aids or the learning’s real purpose. Learning
must lead beyond the body to the reestablishment of the power of the mind in it.
This can be accomplished only if the mind extends to other minds and does not
arrest itself in its extension.
65
The arrest of the mind’s extension is the cause of all illness because only
extension is the mind’s function. The opposite of joy is depression. When your
learning promotes depression instead of joy, you cannot be listening to God’s
joyous Teacher, and you must be learning amiss. To see a body as anything except
a means of pure extension is to limit your mind and hurt yourself. Health is
therefore nothing more than united purpose. If the body is brought under the
purpose of the mind, the body becomes whole because the mind’s purpose is one.
Attack can only be an assumed purpose of the body because apart from the mind
the body has no purpose at all.
66
You are not limited by the body, and thought cannot be made flesh.Yet mind
can be manifested through the body if it goes beyond it and does not interpret
it as limitation. Whenever you see another as limited to or by the body, you are
imposing this limit on yourself. Are you willing to accept this, when your whole
purpose for learning should be to escape from limitations? To conceive of the body
as a means of attack of any kind and to entertain even the possibility that joy
could possibly result is a clear-cut indication of a poor learner. He has accepted a
learning goal in obvious contradiction to the unified purpose of the curriculum
and is interfering with his ability to accept its purpose as his own.
67
Joy is unified purpose, and unified purpose is only God’s. When yours is
unified, it is His. Interfere with His purpose, and you need salvation. You have
condemned yourself, but condemnation is not of God. Therefore, it is not true.
No more are any of the results of your condemnation. When you see a brother as
a body, you are condemning him because you have condemned yourself.Yet if all
condemnation is unreal, and it must be unreal since it is a form of attack, then it
160
Body As Means or End
can have no results.
68
Do not allow yourselves to suffer from the results of what is not true. Free
your minds from the belief that this is possible. In its complete impossibility and
your full awareness of its complete impossibility lie your only hope for release.
But what other hope would you want? Freedom from illusions lies only in not
believing them. There is no attack, but there is unlimited communication and
therefore unlimited power and wholeness. The power of wholeness is extension.
Do not arrest your thought in this world, and you will open your mind to
creation in God.
viii. The
Body As Means
or
End
Attitudes toward the body are attitudes toward attack. The ego’s definitions
of everything are childish and always based on what it believes a thing is for. This
is because it is incapable of true generalizations and equates what it sees with the
function it ascribes to it. It does not equate it with what it is.To the ego, the body
is to attack with. Equating you with the body, it teaches that you are to attack with
because this is what it believes.The body, then, is not the source of its own health.
The body’s condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function.
70
The reason why definitions in terms of function are inferior is that they
may well be inaccurate. Functions are part of being since they arise from it, but
the relationship is not reciprocal. The whole does define the part, but the part
does not define the whole. This is as true of knowledge as it is of perception. The
reason to know in part is to know entirely is because of the fundamental difference
between knowledge and perception. In perception the whole is built up of parts,
which can separate and reassemble in different constellations. Knowledge never
changes, so its constellation is permanent. The only areas in which part-whole
relationships have any meaning are those in which change is possible. There is no
difference between the whole and the part where change is impossible.
71
The body exists in a world which seems to contain two voices which are
fighting for its possession. In this perceived constellation, the body is regarded as
capable of shifting its control from one to the other, making the concept of both
health and sickness possible. The ego makes a fundamental confusion between
means and ends, as it always does. Regarding the body as an end, the ego has
no real use for it because it is not an end. You must have noticed an outstanding
characteristic of every end that the ego has accepted as its own. When you have
achieved it, it has not satisfied you. This is why the ego is forced to shift from one
end to another without ceasing, so that you will continue to hope that it can yet
69
161
ix. Healing as
offer you something.
72
It has been particularly difficult to overcome the ego’s belief in the body as
an end, because this is synonymous with the belief in attack as an end.The ego has
a real investment in sickness. If you are sick, how can you object to the ego’s firm
belief that you are not invulnerable? This is a particularly appealing argument from
the ego’s point of view because it obscures the obvious attack which underlies the
sickness. If you accepted this and also decided against attack, you could not give
this false witness to the ego’s stand.
73
It is hard to perceive sickness as a false witness because you do not realize
that it is entirely out of keeping with what you want. This witness, then, appears
to be innocent and trustworthy because you have not seriously cross-examined
him. If you did, you would not consider sickness such a strong witness on behalf
of the ego’s views.
74
A more honest statement would be as follows: Those who want the ego are
predisposed to defend it. Therefore, their choice of witnesses should be suspect
from the beginning. The ego does not call upon witnesses who would disagree
with its case, nor does the Holy Spirit. We have said that judgment is the function
of the Holy Spirit and one which He is perfectly equipped to fulfill.The ego as a
judge gives anything but an impartial judgment. When the ego calls on a witness,
it has already made the witness an ally.
75
It is still true that the body has no function of itself because it is not an end.
The ego, however, establishes it as an end because as such it will lose its true
function.This is the purpose of everything the ego does. Its sole aim is to lose sight
of the function of everything. A sick body does not make any sense. It could not
make sense because sickness is not what the body is for. Sickness is meaningful
only if the two basic premises on which the ego’s interpretation of the body rests
are true. Specifically, these are that the body is for attack and that you are a body.
Without these premises, sickness is completely inconceivable.
76
Sickness is a way of demonstrating that you can be hurt. It is a witness to
your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to depend on external
guidance. The ego uses this as its best argument for your need for its guidance.
It dictates endless prescriptions for avoiding catastrophic outcomes. The Holy
Spirit, perfectly aware of the same data, does not bother to analyze them at all.
If the data are meaningless, there is no point in considering them. The function
of truth is to collect data which are true. There is no point in trying to make
sense out of meaningless data. Any way you handle them results in nothing. The
more complicated the results become, the harder it may be to recognize their
162
Corrected Perception
nothingness, but it is not necessary to examine all possible outcomes to which
premises give rise to judge them truly.
77
A learning device is not a teacher. It cannot tell you how you feel. You do
not know how you feel because you have accepted the ego’s confusion, and you
think that a learning device can tell you how you feel. Sickness is merely another
example of your insistence on asking the guidance of a teacher who does not know
the answer. The ego is incapable of knowing how you feel. When we said that the
ego does not know anything, we said the one thing about the ego that is wholly
true. But there is a corollary; if knowledge is being and the ego has no knowledge,
then the ego has no being.
78
You might well ask how the voice of something which does not exist can
be so insistent. Have you seriously considered the distorting power of something
you want, even if it is not true? You have had many instances of how what you
want can distort what you see and hear. No one can doubt the ego’s skill in
building up false cases. Nor can anyone doubt your willingness to listen until you
will not to tolerate anything except truth. When you lay the ego aside, it will be
gone. The Holy Spirit’s Voice is as loud as your willingness to listen. It cannot be
louder without violating your will, which the Holy Spirit seeks to free but never
to command.
79
The Holy Spirit teaches you to use your body only to reach your brothers, so
He can teach His message through you. This will heal them and therefore heal you.
Everything used in accordance with its function as the Holy Spirit sees it cannot
be sick. Everything used otherwise is. Do not allow the body to be a mirror of
a split mind. Do not let it be an image of your own perception of littleness. Do
not let it reflect your will to attack. Health is the natural state of anything whose
interpretation is left to the Holy Spirit, Who perceives no attack on anything.
Health is the result of relinquishing all attempts to use the body lovelessly. Health
is the beginning of the proper perspective on life under the guidance of the one
Teacher Who knows what life is, being the Voice for Life Itself.
ix.
Healing
as
Corrected Perception
We once said that the Holy Spirit is the Answer. He is the Answer to
everything because He knows what the answer to everything is. The ego does
not know what a real question is, although it asks an endless number.Yet you can
learn this as you learn to question the value of the ego and thus establish your
ability to evaluate its questions. When the ego tempts you to sickness, do not ask
the Holy Spirit to heal the body, for this would merely be to accept the ego’s
80
163
x. The Acceptance of
belief that the body is the proper aim for healing. Ask rather that the Holy Spirit
teach you the right perception of the body, for perception alone can be distorted.
Only perception can be sick because only perception can be wrong.
81
Wrong perception is distorted willing, which wants things to be as they are
not. The reality of everything is totally harmless because total harmlessness is
the condition of its reality. It is also the condition of your awareness of its reality.
You do not have to seek reality. It will seek you and find you when you meet its
conditions. Its conditions are part of what it is. And this part only is up to you.
The rest is of Itself.You need do so little because it is so powerful that your little
part will bring the whole to you. Accept then your little part, and let the whole
be yours.
82
Wholeness heals because it is of the mind. All forms of sickness, even unto
death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening. They are attempts to
reinforce unconsciousness out of fear of consciousness. This is a pathetic way of trying
not to know by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual. “Rest in peace” is
a blessing for the living, not the dead, because rest comes from waking, not from
sleeping. Sleep is withdrawing; waking is joining. Dreams are illusions of joining,
taking on the ego’s distortions about what joining means if you are sleeping
under its guidance.Yet the Holy Spirit, too, has use for sleep and can use dreams
on behalf of waking if you will let Him.
83
How you wake is the sign of how you have used sleep.To whom did you give
it? Under which teacher did you place it? Whenever you wake dispiritedly, it was
not of the Holy Spirit. Only when you awaken joyously have you utilized sleep
according to the Holy Spirit’s purpose. You can indeed be “drugged by sleep,”
but this is always because you have misused it on behalf of sickness. Sleep is no
more a form of death than death is a form of unconsciousness. Unconsciousness is
impossible. You can rest in peace only because you are awake.
84
Healing is release from the fear of waking and the substitution of the will
to wake. The will to wake is the will to love, since all healing involves replacing
fear with love. The Holy Spirit cannot distinguish among degrees of error, for
if He taught that one form of sickness is more serious than another, He would
be teaching that one error can be more real than another. His function is to
distinguish only between the false and the true, replacing the false with the true.
85
The ego, which always weakens the will, wants to separate the body from
the mind. This is an attempt to destroy it, yet the ego actually believes that it is
protecting it.This is because the ego believes that mind is dangerous and that to make
mindless is to heal. But to make mindless is impossible since it would mean to
164
Reality
make nothing out of what God created. The ego despises weakness, even though
it makes every effort to induce it.The ego wants only what it hates.To the ego this
is perfectly sensible. Believing in the power of attack, the ego wants attack.
86
You have surely begun to realize that this is a very practical course which
means exactly what it says. So does the Bible, if it is properly understood. There
has been a marked tendency on the part of many of the Bible’s followers and
also its translators to be entirely literal about fear and its effects but not about love
and its results. Thus, “hellfire” means “burning,” but raising the dead becomes
allegorical. Actually, it is particularly the references to the outcomes of love which
should be taken literally because the Bible is about love, being about God.
87
The Bible enjoins you to be perfect, to heal all errors, to take no thought of
the body as separate, and to accomplish all things in my name.This is not my name
alone, for ours is a shared identification. The name of God’s Son is one, and you
are enjoined to do the works of love because we share this oneness. Our minds are
whole because they are one. If you are sick you are withdrawing from me.Yet you
cannot withdraw from me alone.You can only withdraw from yourself and me.
88
I would not ask you to do the things you cannot do, and it is impossible that
I could do things you cannot do. Given this, and given this quite literally, there
can be nothing which prevents you from doing exactly what I ask, and everything
which argues for your doing it. I give you no limits because God lays none upon
you. When you limit yourself, we are not of one mind and that is sickness. Yet
sickness is not of the body, but of the mind. All forms of dysfunction are merely
signs that the mind has split and does not accept a unified purpose.
89
The unification of purpose, then, is the Holy Spirit’s only way of healing. This
is because it is the only level at which healing means anything.The re-establishing
of meaning in a chaotic thought system is the only way to heal it. We have said
that your task is only to meet the conditions for meaning since meaning itself is
of God.Yet your return to meaning is essential to His because your meaning is part
of His.Your healing, then, is part of His health since it is part of His Wholeness.
He cannot lose this, but you can not know it.Yet it is still His Will for you, and His
Will must stand forever and in all things
x. The
Acceptance
of
Reality
Fear of the Will of God is one of the strangest beliefs that the human mind
has ever made.This could not possibly have occurred unless the mind were already
profoundly split, making it possible for the mind to be afraid of what it really is.
90
165
It is apparent that reality cannot “threaten” anything except illusions, since reality
can only uphold truth.The very fact that the Will of God, which is what you are,
is perceived as fearful to you demonstrates that you are afraid of what you are. It
is not, then, the Will of God of which you are afraid, but yours.Your will is not the
ego’s, and that is why the ego is against you. What seems to be the fear of God is
really only the fear of your own reality.
91
It is impossible to learn anything consistently in a state of panic. If the purpose
of this course is to help you learn what you are and if you have already decided
that what you are is fearful, then it must follow that you will not learn this course.
Yet you might remember that the reason for the course is that you do not know
who you are. If you do not know your reality, how would you know whether it
is fearful or not?
92
The association of truth and fear, which would be highly artificial at most,
is particularly inappropriate in the minds of those who do not know what truth
is. All that this kind of association means is that you are arbitrarily endowing
something quite beyond your awareness with something you do not want. It is
evident, then, that you are judging something of which you are totally unaware.
You have set this strange situation up so that it is completely impossible to escape
from it without a Guide who does know what your reality is. The purpose of this
Guide is merely to remind you of what you want. He is not attempting to force
an alien will upon you. He is merely making every possible effort, within the
limits you impose on Him, to re-establish your own will in your consciousness.
93
You have imprisoned your will in your unconscious, where it remains available
but cannot help you. When we said that the Holy Spirit’s function is to sort out
the true from the false in your unconscious, we meant that He has the power
to look into what you have hidden and perceive the Will of God there. His
perception of this Will can make it real to you because He is in your mind and
therefore He is your reality. If, then, His perception of your mind brings its reality
to you, He is teaching you what you are.
94
The only source of fear in this whole process can only be what you think
you lose. Yet it is only what the Holy Spirit sees that you can possibly have. We
have emphasized many times that the Holy Spirit will never call upon you to
sacrifice anything. But if you ask the sacrifice of reality of yourself, the Holy Spirit
must remind you that this is not God’s Will because it is not yours. There is no
difference between your will and God’s. If you did not have split minds, you would
recognize that willing is salvation because it is communication. It is impossible to
communicate in alien tongues.You and your Creator can communicate through
166
x. The Acceptance of
Reality
creation because that, and only that, is your joint Will.
95
Divided wills do not communicate because they speak for different things
to the same mind. This loses the ability to communicate simply because confused
communication does not mean anything. A message cannot be said to be
communicated unless it makes sense. How sensible can your messages be when
you ask for what you do not want? Yet as long as you are afraid of your will, this
is precisely what you will ask for. You may insist that the Holy Spirit does not
answer you, but it might be wiser to consider the kind of asker you are.
96
You do not ask only for what you want. This is solely because you are afraid
you might receive it, and you would. That is really why you persist in asking the
teacher who could not possibly teach you your will. Of him you can never learn it,
and this gives you the illusion of safety.Yet you cannot be safe from truth but only
in it. Reality is the only safety.Your will is your salvation because it is the same as
God’s. The separation is nothing more than the belief that it is different.
97
No mind can believe that its will is stronger than God’s. If, then, a mind
believes that its will is different from His, it can only decide either that there is
no God or that God’s Will is fearful. The former accounts for the atheist and the
latter for the martyr. Martyrdom takes many forms, the category including all
doctrines which hold that God demands sacrifices of any kind. Either basic type
of insane decision will induce panic, because the atheist believes he is alone, and
the martyr believes that God is crucifying him. Both really fear abandonment and
retaliation, but the atheist is more reactive against abandonment and the martyr
against retaliation.
98
The atheist maintains that God has left him, but he does not care. He will,
however, become very fearful and hence very angry if anyone suggests that God
has not left him. The martyr, on the other hand, is more aware of guilt and,
believing that punishment is inevitable, attempts to teach himself to like it. The
truth is, very simply, that no one wants either abandonment or retaliation. Many
people seek both, but it is still true that they do not want them. Can you ask
the Holy Spirit for “gifts” such as these and actually expect to receive them? He
cannot make you want something you do not want. When you ask the Universal
Giver for what you do not want, you are asking for what cannot be given because it
was never created. It was never created because it was never your will for you.
99
Ultimately everyone must remember the Will of God because ultimately
everyone must recognize himself. This recognition is the recognition that his
will and God’s are one. In the presence of truth, there are no unbelievers and no
sacrifices. In the security of reality, fear is totally meaningless.To deny what is can
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xi. The Answer to
only seem to be fearful. Fear cannot be real without a cause, and God is the only
Cause. God is Love, and you do want Him. This is your will. Ask for this and you
will be answered because you will be asking only for what belongs to you.
100
When you ask the Holy Spirit for what would hurt you, He cannot answer
because nothing can hurt you and so you are asking for nothing. Any desire which
stems from the ego is a desire for nothing and to ask for it is not a request. It is
merely a denial in the form of a request. The Holy Spirit is not concerned with
form at all, being aware only of meaning. The ego cannot ask the Holy Spirit
for anything because there is complete communication failure between them. Yet you
can ask for everything of the Holy Spirit because your requests are real, being of
your will. Would the Holy Spirit deny the Will of God? And could He fail to
recognize it in His Sons?
101
The energy which you withdraw from creation you expend on fear. This
is not because your energy is limited but because you have limited it. You do not
recognize the enormous waste of energy which you expend in denying truth.
What would you say of someone who persisted in attempting the impossible,
believing that to achieve it is success? The belief that you must have the impossible
in order to be happy is totally at variance with the principle of creation. God
could not will that happiness depended on what you could never have.
102
The fact that God is love does not require belief, but it does require acceptance.
It is indeed possible for you to deny facts, although it is impossible for you to
change them. If you hold your hands over your eyes, you will not see because you
are interfering with the laws of seeing. If you deny love, you will not know it
because your cooperation is the law of its being. You cannot change laws you did
not make, and the laws of happiness were created for you, not by you.
103
Attempts of any kind to deny what is are fearful, and if they are strong, they
will induce panic. Willing against reality, though impossible, can be made into a
very persistent goal, even though you do not want it. But consider the result of this
strange decision.You are devoting your mind to what you do not want. How real
can this devotion be? If you do not want it, it was never created. If it was never
created, it is nothing. Can you really devote yourself to nothing?
104
God in His devotion to you created you devoted to everything and gave you
what you are devoted to. Otherwise, you would not have been created perfect.
Reality is everything, and therefore you have everything because you are real.You
cannot make the unreal because the absence of reality is fearful, and fear cannot
be created. As long as you believe that fear is possible, you will not create. Opposing
orders of reality make reality meaningless, and reality is meaning.
168
Prayer
Remember, then, that God’s Will is already possible and nothing else will ever
be. This is the simple acceptance of reality because only this is real. You cannot
distort reality and know what it is. And if you do distort reality, you will experience
anxiety, depression, and ultimately panic because you are trying to make yourself
unreal. When you feel these things, do not try to look beyond yourself for truth,
for truth can only be within you. Say, therefore,
105
106
Christ is in me and where He is God must be,
for Christ is part of Him.
xi. The
Answer
to
Prayer
Everyone who has ever tried to use prayer to request something has
experienced what appears to be failure. This is not only true in connection with
specific things which might be harmful but also in connection with requests
which are strictly in line with this course. The latter, in particular, might be
incorrectly interpreted as “proof ” that the course does not mean what it says.
You must remember, however, that the course does state, and repeatedly, that its
purpose is the escape from fear.
108
Let us suppose, then, that what you request of the Holy Spirit is what you
really want, but you are still afraid of it. Should this be the case, your attainment of
it would no longer be what you want, even if it is. This accounts for why certain
specific forms of healing are not achieved, even though the state of healing is.
It frequently happens that an individual asks for physical healing because he is
fearful of bodily harm. At the same time, however, if he were healed physically, the
threat to his thought system would be considerably more fearful to him than its
physical expression. In this case he is not really asking for release from fear but for
the removal of a symptom which he has selected.This request is, therefore, not for
healing at all.
109
The Bible emphasizes that all prayers are answered, and this must be true if
no effort is wasted. The very fact that one has asked the Holy Spirit for anything
will ensure a response.Yet it is equally certain that no response given by the Holy
Spirit will ever be one which would increase fear. It is possible that His answer
will not be heard at all. It is impossible, however, that it will be lost.There are many
answers which you have already received but have not yet heard. I assure you that
they are waiting for you. It is indeed true that no effort is wasted.
110
If you would know your prayers are answered, never doubt a Son of God.
107
169
xi. The Answer to
Do not question him and do not confound him, for your faith in him is your
faith in yourself. If you would know God and His Answer, believe in me whose
faith in you cannot be shaken. Can you ask of the Holy Spirit truly and doubt
your brother? Believe his words are true because of the truth which is in him.You
will unite with the truth in him, and his words will be true. As you hear him, you
will hear me. Listening to truth is the only way you can hear it now and finally
know it.
111
The message your brother gives you is up to you. What does he say to you?
What would you have him say? Your decision about him determines the message
you receive. Remember that the Holy Spirit is in him, and His Voice speaks to
you through him. What can so holy a brother tell you except truth? But are you
listening to it? Your brother may not know who he is, but there is a light in his
mind which does know.This light can shine into yours, making his words true and
making you able to hear them. His words are the Holy Spirit’s answer to you. Is
your faith in him strong enough to let you hear?
112
Salvation is of your brother. The Holy Spirit extends from your mind to his
and answers you. You cannot hear the Voice for God in yourself alone because
you are not alone. And His answer is only for what you are. You will not know
the trust I have in you unless you extend it.You will not trust the guidance of the
Holy Spirit or believe that it is for you unless you hear it in others. It must be for
your brother because it is for you. Would God have created a Voice for you alone?
Could you hear His answer except as He answers all of God’s Sons? Hear of your
brother what you would have me hear of you, for you would not want me to be
deceived.
113
I love you for the truth in you, as God does. Your deceptions may deceive
you, but they cannot deceive me. Knowing what you are, I cannot doubt you. I hear
only the Holy Spirit in you, who speaks to me through you. If you would hear
me, hear my brothers in whom God’s Voice speaks. The answer to all prayers lies
in them. You will be answered as you hear the answer in everyone. Do not listen
to anything else, or you will not hear truth.
114
Believe in your brothers because I believe in you, and you will learn that my
belief in you is justified. Believe in me by believing in them for the sake of what
God gave them. They will answer you if you learn to ask truth of them. Do not
ask for blessings without blessing them, for only in this way can you learn how
blessed you are. By following this way, you are looking for the truth in you. This
is not going beyond yourself but toward yourself. Hear only God’s Answer in His
Sons, and you are answered.
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Prayer
To disbelieve is to side against or to attack. To believe is to accept and to side
with. To believe is not to be credulous but to accept and appreciate. What you do
not believe, you do not appreciate, and you cannot be grateful for what you do not
value. There is a price you will pay for judgment because judgment is the setting
of a price. And as you set it, you will pay it.
116
If paying is equated with getting, you will set the price low but demand a high
return.You will have forgotten, however, that your return is in proportion to your
judgment of worth. If paying is associated with giving, it cannot be perceived as
loss, and the reciprocal relationship of giving and receiving will be recognized.The
price will then be set high because of the value of the return. The price for getting is to lose sight of value, making it inevitable that you will not value what you
receive.Valuing it little, you will not appreciate it and will not want it.
117
Never forget, then, that you have set the value on what you receive and have
priced it by what you give. To believe that it is possible to get much for little is
to believe that you can bargain with God. God’s laws are always fair and perfectly
consistent. By giving you receive. But to receive is to accept, not to get. It is impossible not to have, but it is possible not to know you have. The recognition of
having is the willingness for giving, and only by this willingness can you recognize
what you have. What you give is therefore the value you put on what you have,
being the exact measure of the value you put upon it. And this, in turn, is the
measure of how much you want it.
118
You can ask of the Holy Spirit, then, only by giving to Him, and you can give to
Him only where you see Him. If you see Him in everyone, consider how much
you will be asking of Him and how much you will receive. He will deny you nothing
because you have denied Him nothing, and so you can share everything. This is
the way, and the only way, to have His answer because His answer is all you can
ask for and want. Say, then, to everyone,
115
119
Because I will to know myself, I see you as God’s Son
and my brother.
171
ii. Sanity and
Perception
4
sense as the brother whose errors you perceive. This cannot be correction.Yet it
is more than merely lack of correction for him. It is the giving up of correction
in yourself.
5
When a brother behaves insanely, you can heal him only by perceiving the
sanity in him. If you perceive his errors and accept them, you are accepting yours. If
you want to give yours over to the Holy Spirit, you must do this with his. Unless
this becomes the one way in which you handle all errors, you cannot understand
how all errors are undone. How is this different from telling you that what you
teach you learn? Your brother is as right as you are, and if you think he is wrong,
you are condemning yourself.
6
You cannot correct yourself. Is it possible, then, for you to correct another? Yet
you can see him truly because it is possible for you to see yourself truly. It is not
up to you to change him but merely to accept him as he is. His errors do not
come from the truth that is in him, and only this truth is yours. His errors cannot
change this and can have no effect at all on the truth in you. To perceive errors in
anyone and to react to them as if they were real is to make them real to you.You
will not escape paying the price for this, not because you are being punished for
it, but because you are following the wrong guide and will lose your way.
7
Your brother’s errors are not of him any more than yours are of you. Accept
his errors as real, and you have attacked yourself. If you would find your way and
keep it, see only truth beside you, for you walk together. The Holy Spirit in you
forgives all things in you and in your brother. His errors are forgiven with yours.
Atonement is no more separate than love. Atonement cannot be separate because
it comes from love. Any attempt you make to correct a brother means that you
believe correction by you is possible, and this can only be the arrogance of the ego.
Correction is of God,Who does not know of arrogance.The Holy Spirit forgives
everything because God created everything.
8
Do not undertake His function, or you will forget yours. Accept only the
function of healing in time because that is what time is for. God gave you the
function to create in eternity.You do not need to learn this, but you do need to
learn to want this, and for this all learning was made.This is the Holy Spirit’s good
use of an ability which you do not need, but which you have made. Give it to Him!
You do not know how to use it. He will teach you how to see yourself without
condemnation by learning how to look on everything without it. Condemnation
will then not be real to you, and all your errors will be forgiven.
172
173
nine
The Correction of Error
i.
Introduction
T
he alertness of the ego to the errors which other egos make is not the
kind of vigilance the Holy Spirit would have you maintain. Egos are
critical in terms of the kind of “sense” they stand for. They understand this kind
of sense because it is sensible to them. To the Holy Spirit, it makes no sense at all.
To the ego, it is kind and right and good to point out errors and “correct” them.
This makes perfect sense to the ego, which is totally unaware of what errors are
and what correction is.
9:2
Errors are of the ego, and correction of errors of any kind lies solely in the
relinquishment of the ego. When you correct a brother, you are telling him that he is
wrong. He may be making no sense at the time, and it is certain that if he is speaking
from the ego, he will be making no sense. But your task is still to tell him he is
right. You do not tell him this verbally if he is speaking foolishly because he needs
correction at another level, since his error is at another level. He is still right because
he is a Son of God. His ego is always wrong, no matter what it says or does.
3
If you point out the errors of your brother’s ego, you must be seeing through
yours, because the Holy Spirit does not perceive his errors. This must be true if
there is no communication at all between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The ego
makes no sense, and the Holy Spirit does not attempt to understand anything
that arises from it. Since He does not understand it, He does not judge it, knowing
that nothing it engenders means anything.
ii.
Sanity
and
Perception
When you react at all to errors, you are not listening to the Holy Spirit. He
has merely disregarded them, and if you attend to them, you are not hearing
Him. If you do not hear Him, you are listening to your ego and making as little
iii. Atonement as a
Chapter 9: THE CORRECTION OF ERROR
iii. Atonement as a
Lesson
in
Sharing
Atonement is for all because it is the way to undo the belief that anything is for
you alone. To forgive is to overlook. Look, then, beyond error, and do not let your
perception rest upon it, for you will believe what your perception holds. Accept
as true only what your brother is if you would know yourself. Perceive what he
is not, and you cannot know what you are because you see him falsely. Remember
always that your identity is shared and that its sharing is its reality.
10
You have a part to play in the Atonement, but the plan of the Atonement is
beyond you.You do not know how to overlook errors, or you would not make
them. It would merely be further error to think either that you do not make them
or that you can correct them without a Guide to correction. And if you do not
follow this Guide, your errors will not be corrected. The plan is not yours because
of your limited ideas of what you are.This limitation is where all errors arise.The
way to undo them, therefore, is not of you but for you.
11
The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because you have
forgotten how to do it. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of what is your natural
ability. By reinterpreting the ability to attack, which you did make, into the ability
to share, He translates what you have made into what God created. If you would
accomplish this through Him, you cannot look on your abilities through the eyes
of the ego, or you will judge them as it does. All their harmfulness lies in its
judgment. All their helpfulness lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit.
12
The ego, too, has a plan of forgiveness because you are asking for one, though
not of the right teacher. The ego’s plan, of course, makes no sense and will not
work. By following it, you will merely place yourself in an impossible situation
to which the ego always leads you. The ego’s plan is to have you see error clearly
first and then overlook it.Yet how can you overlook what you have made real? By
seeing it clearly, you have made it real and cannot overlook it.
13
This is where the ego is forced to appeal to “mysteries” and begins to insist
that you must accept the meaningless to save yourself. Many have tried to do
this in my name, forgetting that my words make perfect sense because they come
from God.They are as sensible now as they ever were because they speak of ideas
which are eternal. Forgiveness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear.
Nor does it make real the unreal and then destroy it.
14
Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error
from the beginning and thus keeping it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in
its realness enter your minds at all, or you will also believe that you must undo
what you have made in order to be forgiven. What has no effect does not exist,
9
174
Lesson in Sharing
and to the Holy Spirit, the effects of error are totally non-existent. By steadily and
consistently canceling out all its effects everywhere and in all respects, He teaches
that the ego does not exist and proves it. Follow His teaching in forgiveness, then
because forgiveness is His function, and He knows how to fulfill it perfectly.That
is what we meant when we once said that miracles are natural, and when they do
not occur, something has gone wrong.
15
Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow the Holy Spirit’s
plan of salvation in recognition of the fact that you do not know what it is. His
work is not your function, and unless you accept this, you cannot learn what your
function is. The confusion of functions is so typical of the ego that you should
be quite familiar with it by now. The ego believes that all functions belong to it,
even though it has no idea what they are. This is more than mere confusion. It is
a particularly dangerous combination of grandiosity and confusion which makes
it likely that the ego will attack anyone and anything for no reason at all. This is
exactly what the ego does. It is totally unpredictable in its responses because it has
no idea of what it perceives.
16
If one has no idea of what is happening, how appropriately can you expect
him to react? You might still ask yourself, regardless of how you can account for the
reactions, whether they place the ego in a very sound position as the guide for
yours. It seems absurd to have to emphasize repeatedly that the ego’s qualifications
as a guide are singularly unfortunate and that it is a remarkably poor choice as a
teacher of salvation. Yet this question, ridiculous as it seems, is really the crucial
issue in the whole separation fantasy. Anyone who elects a totally insane guide
must be totally insane himself.
17
It is not true that you do not know the guide is insane. You know it because
I know it, and you have judged it by the same standard as I have. The ego literally
lives on borrowed time, and its days are numbered. Do not fear the Last Judgment,
but welcome it and do not wait, for the ego’s time is borrowed from your eternity.
This is the Second Coming, which was made for you as the First was created.The
Second Coming is merely the return of sense. Can this possibly be fearful?
18
What can be fearful but fantasy, and no one turns to fantasy unless he despairs
of finding satisfaction in reality.Yet it is certain that he will never find satisfaction
in fantasy, so that his only hope is to change his mind about reality. Only if the
decision that reality is fearful is wrong can God be right. And I assure you that God
is right. Be glad, then, that you have been wrong, but this was only because you
did not know who you were. Had you remembered, you could no more have
been wrong than God can. The impossible can happen only in fantasy. When you
175
search for reality in fantasies, you will not find it.The symbols of fantasy are of the
ego, and of these you will find many. But do not look for meaning in them. They
have no more meaning than the fantasies into which they are woven.
19
Fairy tales can be pleasant or fearful, pretty or ugly, but no one calls them
true. Children may believe them, and so for a while the tales are true for them.Yet
when reality dawns, the fantasies are gone. Reality has not gone in the meanwhile.
The Second Coming is the awareness of reality, not its return. Behold, my children,
reality is here. It belongs to you and me and God and is perfectly satisfying to all
of us. Only this awareness heals because it is the awareness of truth.
iv. The
Unhealed Healer
The ego’s plan for forgiveness is far more widely used than God’s. This is
because it is undertaken by unhealed healers and is therefore of the ego. Let us
consider the unhealed healer more carefully now. By definition, he is trying to
give what he has not received. If he is a theologian, he may begin with the premise,
“I am a miserable sinner and so are you.” If he is a psychotherapist, he is more
likely to start with the equally incredible idea that he really believes in attack and
so does the patient, but it does not matter in either case.
21
We have repeatedly stated that beliefs of the ego cannot be shared, and this
is why they are unreal. How, then, can “uncovering” them make them real? Every
healer who searches fantasies for truth must be unhealed because he does not know
where to look for truth and therefore does not have the answer to the problem
of healing. There is an advantage to bringing nightmares into awareness, but only
to teach that they are not real and that anything they contain is meaningless. The
unhealed healer cannot do this because he does not believe it.
22
All unhealed healers follow the ego’s plan for forgiveness in one form or
another. If they are theologians, they are likely to condemn themselves, teach
condemnation, and advocate a very fearful solution. Projecting condemnation
onto God, they make Him appear retaliative and fear His retribution. What they
have done is merely to identify with the ego and, by perceiving clearly what it does,
condemn themselves because of this profound confusion. It is understandable
that there was been a revolt against this concept, but to revolt against it is still to
believe in it. The form of the revolt, then, is different but not the content.
23
The newer forms of the ego’s plan are as unhelpful as the older ones because
form does not matter to the Holy Spirit and therefore does not matter at all.
According to the newer forms of the ego’s plan, the therapist interprets the ego’s
20
176
iv. The
Unhealed Healer
symbols in the nightmare and then uses them to prove that the nightmare is real.
Having made it real, he then attempts to dispel its effects by depreciating the
importance of the dreamer. This would be a healing approach if the dreamer were
properly identified as unreal. Yet if the dreamer is equated with the mind, the
mind’s corrective power through the Holy Spirit is denied.
24
It is noteworthy that this is a contradiction even in the ego’s terms, and one
which it usually does note, even in its confusion. If the way to counteract fear
is to reduce the importance of the fearer, how can this build ego strength? These
perfectly self-evident inconsistencies account for why, except in certain stylized
verbal accounts, no one can explain what happens in psychotherapy. Nothing real
does. Nothing real has happened to the unhealed healer, and he learns from his
own teaching.
25
Because his ego is involved, it always attempts to gain some support from
the situation. Seeking to get something for himself, the unhealed healer does not
know how to give and consequently cannot share. He cannot correct because he
is not working correctively. He believes that it is up to him to teach the patient
what is real, but he does not know it himself. What, then, should happen? When
God said, “Let there be light,” there was light. Can you find light by analyzing
darkness as the psychotherapist does or like the theologian, by acknowledging
darkness in yourself and looking for a distant light to remove it while emphasizing
the distance?
26
Healing is not mysterious. Nothing will occur unless you understand it, since
light is understanding. A “miserable sinner” cannot be healed without magic, nor
can an “unimportant mind” esteem itself without magic. Both forms of the ego’s
approach, then, must arrive at an impasse, the characteristic “impossible situation”
to which the ego always leads. It can be helpful to point out to a patient where he
is heading, but the point is lost unless he can change his direction. The therapist
cannot do this for him, but he also cannot do this for himself.
27
The only meaningful contribution the therapist can make is to present an
example of one whose direction has been changed for him and who no longer
believes in nightmares of any kind.The light in his mind will therefore answer the
questioner, who must decide with God that there is light because he sees it. And
by his acknowledgment, the therapist knows it is there. That is how perception
ultimately is translated into knowledge. The miracle worker begins by perceiving
light and translates his perception into sureness by continually extending it and
accepting its acknowledgment. Its effects assure him it is there.
28
The therapist does not heal; he lets healing be. He can point to darkness, but
177
v. The Awareness of the
he cannot bring light of himself, for light is not of him.Yet, being for him, it must
also be for his patient. The Holy Spirit is the only therapist. He makes healing
perfectly clear in any situation in which he is the Guide. The human therapist
can only let Him fulfill His function. He needs no help for this. He will tell you
exactly what to do to help anyone He sends to you for help and will speak to him
through you if you do not interfere. Remember that you are choosing a guide for
helping, and the wrong choice will not help. But remember also that the right one
will. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God.
29
As you awaken other minds to the Holy Spirit through Him and not yourself,
you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world, but that
the laws you are obeying work. “The good is what works” is a sound, though
insufficient, statement. Only the good can work. Nothing else works at all. This
course is a guide to behavior. Being a very direct and very simple learning
situation, it provides the Guide who tells you what to do. If you do it, you will see
that it works. Its results are more convincing than its words. They will convince
you that the words are true. By following the right Guide you will learn the
simplest of all lessons—
30
By their fruits ye shall know them,
and they shall know themselves.
v. The
Awareness
of the
Holy Spirit
How can you become increasingly aware of the Holy Spirit in you except by
His effects? You cannot see Him with your eyes nor hear Him with your ears.
How, then, can you perceive Him at all? If you inspire joy, and others react to
you with joy even though you are not experiencing joy yourself, there must be
something in you that is capable of producing it. If it is in you and can produce
joy, and if you see that it does produce joy in others, you must be dissociating it
in yourself.
32
It seems to you that the Holy Spirit does not produce joy consistently in
you only because you do not consistently arouse joy in others. Their reactions to
you are your evaluations of His consistency. When you are inconsistent, you will
not always give rise to joy and so you will not always recognize His consistency.
What you offer to your brother, you offer to Him because He cannot go beyond
your offering in His giving. This is not because He limits His giving, but simply
because you have limited your receiving. The will to receive is the will to accept.
33
If your brothers are part of you, will you accept them? Only they can teach
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Holy Spirit
you what you are, and your learning is the result of what you taught them. What
you call upon in them, you call upon in yourself. And as you call upon it in them,
it becomes real to you. God has but one Son, knowing them all as one. Only God
Himself is more than they, but they are not less than He is.Would you know what
this means? If what you do to my brother you do to me, and if you do everything
for yourself because we are part of you, everything we do belongs to you as well.
Every Soul God created is part of you and shares His glory with you. His Glory
belongs to Him, but it is equally yours. You cannot, then, be less glorious than He
is.
34
God is more than you only because He created you, but not even this would
He keep from you. Therefore you can create as He did, and your dissociation
will not alter this. Neither God’s light nor yours is dimmed because you do not
see. Because the Sonship must create as one, you remember creation whenever
you recognize part of creation. Each part you remember adds to your wholeness
because each part is whole.Wholeness is indivisible, but you cannot learn of your
wholeness until you see it everywhere.You can know yourself only as God knows
His Son, for knowledge is shared with God. When you awake in Him you will
know your magnitude by accepting His limitlessness as yours, but meanwhile you
will judge it as you judge your brothers’ and will accept it as you accept theirs.
35
You are not yet awake, but you can learn how to awaken. Very simply the
Holy Spirit teaches you to awaken others. As you see them waken, you will learn
what waking means, and because you have willed to wake them, their gratitude
and their appreciation of what you have given them will teach you its value. They
will become the witnesses to your reality, as you were created witnesses to God’s.
Yet when the Sonship comes together and accepts its oneness, it will be known by
its creations, who witness to its reality as the Son does to the Father.
36
Miracles have no place in eternity because they are reparative.Yet while you
still need healing, your miracles are the only witnesses to your reality which you
can recognize. You cannot perform a miracle for yourself because miracles are a
way of giving acceptance and receiving it. In time, the giving comes first, though
they are simultaneous in eternity, where they cannot be separated.When you have
learned that they are the same, the need for time is over.
37
Eternity is one time, its only dimension being “always.” This cannot mean
anything to you, however, until you remember God’s open arms and finally know
His open Mind. Like Him, you are “always”—in His mind and with a mind like
His. In your open mind are your creations, in perfect communication born of
perfect understanding. Could you but accept one of them, you would not want
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vi. Salvation and
anything the world has to offer. Everything else would be totally meaningless.
God’s meaning is incomplete without you, and you are incomplete without your
creations. Accept your brother in this world and accept nothing else, for in him
you will find your creations because he created them with you. You will never
know that you are co-creator with God until you learn that your brother is a
co-creator with you.
vi.
Salvation
and
God’s Will
God’s Will is your salvation. Would He not have given you the means to
find it? If He wills you to have it, He must have made it possible and very
easy to obtain it. Your brothers are everywhere. You do not have to seek far for
salvation. Every minute and every second gives you a chance to save yourself. Do
not lose these chances, not because they will not return, but because delay of joy
is needless. God wills you perfect happiness now. Is it possible that this is not also
your will? And is it possible that this is not also the will of your brothers?
39
Consider, then, that in this joint will you are all united, and in this only.
There will be disagreement on anything else, but not on this. This, then, is where
peace abides. And you abide in peace when you so decide. Yet you cannot abide
in peace unless you accept the Atonement, because the Atonement is the way
to peace. The reason is very simple and so obvious that it is often overlooked.
That is because the ego is afraid of the obvious since obviousness is the essential
characteristic of reality.Yet you cannot overlook it unless you are not looking.
40
It is perfectly obvious that if the Holy Spirit looks with love on all He perceives,
He looks with love on you. His evaluation of you is based on His knowledge of
what you are, and so He evaluates you truly. And this evaluation must be in your
mind because He is. The ego is also in your mind because you have accepted it
there. Its evaluation of you, however, is the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit’s
because the ego does not love you. It is unaware of what you are and wholly
mistrustful of everything it perceives because its own perceptions are so shifting.
The ego is therefore capable of suspiciousness at best and viciousness at worst.
That is its range. It cannot exceed it because of its uncertainty. And it can never
go beyond it because it can never be certain.
41
You, then, have two conflicting evaluations of yourself in your minds, and they
cannot both be true.You do not yet realize how completely different these evaluations
are because you do not understand how lofty the Holy Spirit’s perception of you
really is. He is not deceived by anything you do because He never forgets what
you are. The ego is deceived by everything you do, even when you respond to
38
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God’s Will
the Holy Spirit, because at such times its confusion increases.The ego is, therefore,
particularly likely to attack you when you react lovingly because it has evaluated
you as unloving, and you are going against its judgment.
42
The ego will begin to attack your motives as soon as they become clearly
out of accord with its perception of you. This is when it will shift abruptly from
suspiciousness to viciousness, since its uncertainty is increased. Yet it is surely
pointless to attack in return. What can this mean except that you are agreeing
with the ego’s evaluation of what you are? If you are willing to see yourself as
unloving, you will not be happy.You are condemning yourself and must therefore
regard yourself as inadequate.Would you look to the ego to help you escape from
a sense of inadequacy it has produced and must maintain for its existence? Can you
escape from its evaluation of you by using its methods for keeping this picture
intact?
43
You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from within it. Its own range
precludes this. You can only go beyond it, look back from a point where sanity
exists, and see the contrast. Only by this contrast can insanity be judged as insane.
With the grandeur of God in you, you have chosen to be little and to lament your
littleness. Within the system which dictated this choice, the lament is inevitable.
Your littleness is taken for granted there, and you do not ask, “Who granted it?”
The question is meaningless within the ego’s thought system because it opens the
whole thought system to question.
44
We said before that the ego does not know what a real question is. Lack
of knowledge of any kind is always associated with unwillingness to know and
produces a total lack of knowledge simply because knowledge is total. Not to
question your littleness, therefore, is to deny all knowledge and keep the ego’s
whole thought system intact. You cannot retain part of a thought system because
it can be questioned only at its foundation. And this must be questioned from
beyond it because, within it, its foundation does stand. The Holy Spirit judges
against the reality of the ego’s thought system merely because He knows its
foundation is not true. Therefore, nothing that arises from it means anything. The
Holy Spirit judges every belief you hold in terms of where it comes from. If
it comes from God, He knows it to be true. If it does not, He knows that it is
meaningless.
45
Whenever you question your value, say:
46
47
God Himself is incomplete without me.
Remember this when the ego speaks, and you will not hear it. The truth
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about you is so lofty that nothing unworthy of God is worthy of you. Choose,
then, what you want in these terms and accept nothing that you would not offer
to God as wholly fitting for Him, for you do not want anything else. Return your
part of Him, and He will give you all of Himself in exchange for your return of
what belongs to Him and renders Him complete.
vii.
Grandeur Versus Grandiosity
Grandeur is of God and only of Him. Therefore, it is in you. Whenever you
become aware of it, however dimly, you abandon the ego automatically because
in the presence of the grandeur of God the meaninglessness of the ego becomes
perfectly apparent. Though it does not understand this, the ego believes that its
“enemy” has struck and attempts to offer gifts to induce you to return to its
“protection.” Self-inflation of the ego is its alternative to the grandeur of God.
Which will you choose?
49
Grandiosity is always a cover for despair. It is without hope because it is not
real. It is an attempt to counteract your littleness, based on the belief that the
littleness is real. Without this belief, grandiosity is meaningless, and you could
not possibly want it. The essence of grandiosity is competitiveness because it
always involves attack. It is a delusional attempt to outdo but not to undo. We said
before that the ego vacillates between suspiciousness and viciousness. It remains
suspicious as long as you despair of yourself. It shifts to viciousness whenever you
will not tolerate self-abasement and seek relief. Then it offers you the illusion of
attack as a solution.
50
The ego does not know the difference between grandeur and grandiosity
because it does not know the difference between miracle impulses and ego-alien
beliefs of its own.We once said that the ego is aware of threat, but does not make
distinctions between two entirely different kinds of threat to its existence. Its own
profound sense of vulnerability renders it incapable of judgment except in terms
of attack. When it experiences threat, its only decision is whether to attack now
or to withdraw to attack later. If you accept its offer of grandiosity, it will attack
immediately. If you do not, it will wait.
51
The ego is immobilized in the presence of God’s grandeur because His
grandeur establishes your freedom. Even the faintest hint of your reality literally
drives the ego from your mind because of complete lack of investment in it.
Grandeur is totally without illusions, and because it is real, it is compellingly
convincing. Yet the conviction of reality will not remain with you unless you
do not allow the ego to attack it. The ego will make every effort to recover and
48
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vii. Grandeur Versus
Grandiosity
mobilize its energies against your release. It will tell you that you are insane and
argue that grandeur cannot be a real part of you because of the littleness in which
it believes.
52
Yet your grandeur is not delusional because you did not make it. You have
made grandiosity and are afraid of it because it is a form of attack, but your
grandeur is of God, Who created it out of His Love. From your grandeur you
can only bless because your grandeur is your abundance. By blessing you hold it
in your minds, protecting it from illusions and keeping yourself in the Mind of
God. Remember always that you cannot be anywhere except in the Mind of God.
When you forget this, you will despair, and you will attack.
53
The ego depends solely on your willingness to tolerate it. If you are willing
to look upon your grandeur, you cannot despair, and therefore you cannot want
the ego. Your grandeur is God’s answer to the ego because it is true. Littleness
and grandeur cannot co-exist, nor is it possible for them to alternate in your
awareness. Littleness and grandiosity can and must alternate in your awareness
since both are untrue and are therefore on the same level. Being the level of shift,
it is experienced as shifting, and extremes are its essential characteristic.
54
Truth and littleness are denials of each other because grandeur is truth. Truth
does not vacillate; it is always true. When grandeur slips away from you, you have
replaced it with something you have made. Perhaps it is the belief in littleness;
perhaps it is the belief in grandiosity. Yet it must be insane because it is not true.
Your grandeur will never deceive you, but your illusions always will. Illusions are
deceptions. You cannot triumph, but you are exalted. And in your exalted state,
you seek others like you and rejoice with them.
55
It is easy to distinguish grandeur from grandiosity because love is returned,
but pride is not. Pride will not produce miracles and therefore will deprive you
of your true witnesses to your reality. Truth is not obscure nor hidden, but its
obviousness to you lies in the joy you bring to its witnesses, who show it to you.
They attest to your grandeur, but they cannot attest to pride because pride is not
shared. God wants you to behold what He created because it is His joy.
56
Can your grandeur be arrogant when God Himself witnesses to it? And what
can be real that has no witnesses? What good can come of it? And if no good can
come of it, the Holy Spirit cannot use it. What He cannot transform to the Will
of God does not exist at all. Grandiosity is delusional because it is used to replace
your grandeur.Yet what God has created cannot be replaced. God is incomplete
without you because His grandeur is total, and you cannot be missing from it.
57
You are altogether irreplaceable in the Mind of God. No one else can fill
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viii. The Inclusiveness of
your part of It, and while you leave your part of It empty, your eternal place
merely waits for your return. God, through His Voice, reminds you of It, and God
Himself keeps your extensions safe within It. Yet you do not know them until
you return to them. You cannot replace the Kingdom, and you cannot replace
yourself. God, Who knows your value, would not have it so, and so it is not so.Your
value is in God’s Mind and therefore not in yours alone.To accept yourself as God
created you cannot be arrogance because it is the denial of arrogance. To accept
your littleness is arrogant because it means that you believe your evaluation of
yourself is truer than God’s.
58
Yet if truth is indivisible, your evaluation of yourself must be God’s. You did
not establish your value, and it needs no defense. Nothing can attack it or prevail
over it. It does not vary. It merely is. Ask the Holy Spirit what it is and He will tell
you, but do not be afraid of His answer, for it comes from God. It is an exalted
answer because of its Source, but the Source is true and so is Its answer. Listen and
do not question what you hear, for God does not deceive. He would have you
replace the ego’s belief in littleness with His own exalted answer to the question
of your being, so that you can cease to question it and know it for what it is.
viii. The Inclusiveness of
Creation
Nothing beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving because nothing
is beyond you. Time and eternity are both in your mind and will conflict until
you perceive time solely as a means to regain eternity.You cannot do this as long
as you believe that anything which happens to you is caused by factors outside
yourself. You must learn that time is solely at your disposal, and that nothing in
the world can take this responsibility from you.You can violate God’s laws in your
imagination, but you cannot escape from them. They were established for your
protection and are as inviolate as your safety.
60
God created nothing beside you, and nothing beside you exists, for you are
part of Him.What except Him can exist? Nothing beyond Him can happen because
nothing except Him is real. Your creations add to Him as you do, but nothing is
added that is different because everything has always been. What can upset you
except the ephemeral, and how can the ephemeral be real if you are God’s only
creation, and He created you eternal? Your holy will establishes everything that
happens to you. Every response you make to everything you perceive is up to you
because your will determines your perception of it.
61
God does not change His Mind about you, for He is not uncertain of Himself.
And what He knows can be known because He does not know only for Himself.
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Creation
He created you for Himself, but He gave you the power to create for your self so
you could be like Him. That is why your will is holy. Can anything exceed the
love of God? Can anything, then, exceed your will? Nothing can reach you from
beyond it because, being in God, you encompass everything. Believe this, and you
will realize how much is up to you.When anything threatens your peace of mind,
ask yourself,
62
Has God changed His Mind about me?
Then accept His decision, for it is indeed changeless, and refuse to change
your mind about yourself. God will never decide against you, or He would be
deciding against Himself.
64
The reason you do not know your creations is simply that you would decide
against them as long as your minds are split, and to attack what you have created
is impossible. But remember that it is as impossible for God. The law of creation is
that you love your creations as yourself because they are part of you. Everything
that was created is therefore perfectly safe because the laws of God protect it by
His Love. Any part of your mind that does not know this has banished itself from
knowledge because it has not met its conditions.
65
Who could have done this but you? Recognize this gladly, for in this
recognition lies the realization that your banishment is not of God and therefore
does not exist. You are at home in God, dreaming of exile but perfectly capable
of awakening to reality. Is it your will to do so? You know from your own
experience that what you see in dreams you think is real as long as you are asleep.
Yet the instant you waken, you know that everything that seemed to happen did
not happen at all. You do not think this mysterious, even though all the laws of
what you awakened to were violated while you slept. Is it not possible that you
merely shifted from one dream to another, without really wakening?
66
Would you bother to reconcile what happened in conflicting dreams, or
would you dismiss both together if you discovered that reality is in accord with
neither? You do not remember being awake.When you hear the Holy Spirit, you
merely feel better because loving seems possible to you, but you do not remember
yet that it once was so. And it is in this remembering that you will know it can be
so again. What is possible has not yet been accomplished.Yet what has once been
is so now if it is eternal.When you remember, you will know what you remember
is eternal and therefore is now.
67
You will remember everything the instant you desire it wholly, for if to desire
wholly is to create, you will have willed away the separation, returning your
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ix. The
mind simultaneously to your Creator and your creations. Knowing them, you
will have no wish to sleep but only the will to waken and be glad. Dreams will
be impossible because you will want only truth, and being at last your will, it will
be yours.
ix. The
Decision
to
Forget
Unless you know something, you cannot dissociate it. Knowledge therefore
precedes dissociation, and dissociation is nothing more than a decision to forget. What
has been forgotten then appears to be fearful, but only because the dissociation
was an attack on truth. You are fearful because you have forgotten. And you have
replaced your knowledge by an awareness of dreams because you are afraid of your
dissociation, not of what you have dissociated. Even in this world’s therapy, when
dissociated material is accepted, it ceases to be fearful, for the laws of mind always
hold.
69
Yet to give up the dissociation of reality brings more than merely lack of fear.
In this decision lie joy and peace and the glory of creation. Offer the Holy Spirit
only your will to remember, for He retains the knowledge of God and of yourself
for you, waiting for your acceptance. Give up gladly everything that would stand
in the way of your remembering, for God is in your memory, and His Voice will
tell you that you are part of Him when you are willing to remember Him and
know your own reality again. Let nothing in this world delay your remembering
of Him, for in this remembering is the knowledge of yourself.
70
To remember is merely to restore to your mind what is already there. You do
not make what you remember; you merely accept again what has been made but
was rejected.The ability to accept truth in this world is the perceptual counterpart
of creating in the Kingdom. God will do His part if you will do yours, and
His return in exchange for yours is the exchange of knowledge for perception.
Nothing is beyond His Will for you. But signify your will to remember Him and
behold! He will give you everything but for the asking.
71
When you attack, you are denying yourself. You are specifically teaching
yourself that you are not what you are. Your denial of reality precludes the
acceptance of God’s gift because you have accepted something else in its place.
If you understand that the misuse of defenses always constitutes an attack on
truth and truth is God, you will realize why this is always fearful. If you further
recognize that you are part of God, you will understand why it is that you always
attack yourself first.
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Decision to Forget
If you realized the complete havoc this makes of your peace of mind, you
could not make such an insane decision. You make it only because you still
believe that it can get you something you want. It follows, then, that you want
something other than peace of mind, but you have not considered what it must
be.Yet the logical outcome of your decision is perfectly clear if you will look at it.
By deciding against your reality, you have made yourself vigilant against God and
His Kingdom. And it is this vigilance that makes you afraid to remember Him.
73
You have not attacked God, and you do love Him. Can you change your
reality? No one can will to destroy himself. When you think you are attacking
your self, it is a sure sign that you hate what you think you are. And this, and only
this, can be attacked by you.What you think you are can be hateful, and what this
strange image makes you do can be very destructive. Yet the destruction is no
more real than the image, although those who make idols do worship them. The
idols are nothing, but their worshipers are the Sons of God in sickness.
74
God would have them released from their sickness and returned to His Mind.
He will not limit your power to help them because He has given it to you. Do
not be afraid of it because it is your salvation. What Comforter can there be for
the sick Children of God except His power through you? Remember that it does
not matter where in the Sonship He is accepted. He is always accepted for all, and
when your mind receives Him, the remembrance of Him awakens throughout
the Sonship. Heal your brothers simply by accepting God for them.
75
Your minds are not separate, and God has only one channel for healing
because He has but one Son. His remaining communication link with all His
Children joins them together and them to Him. To be aware of this is to heal
them because it is the awareness that no one is separate, and so no one is sick.
To believe that a Son of God can be sick is to believe that part of God can suffer.
Love cannot suffer because it can not attack. The remembrance of love therefore
brings invulnerability with it.
76
Do not side with sickness in the presence of a Son of God even if he believes
in it, for your acceptance of God in him acknowledges the love of God which he
has forgotten.Your recognition of him as part of God teaches him the truth about
himself, which he is denying. Would you strengthen his denial of God and thus
lose sight of yourself? Or would you remind him of his wholeness and remember
your Creator with him? To believe a Son of God is sick is to worship the same
idol he does. God created love, not idolatry. All forms of idolatry are caricatures
of creation, taught by sick minds which are too divided to know that creation
shares power and never usurps it. Sickness is idolatry because it is the belief that
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x. Magic Versus
power can be taken from you.Yet this is impossible because you are part of God,
Who is all power.
77
A sick god must be an idol, made in the image of what its maker thinks he
is. And that is exactly what the ego does perceive in a Son of God; a sick god,
self-created, self-sufficient, very vicious, and very vulnerable. Is this the idol you
would worship? Is this the image you would be vigilant to save? Look calmly at
the logical conclusion of the ego’s thought system and judge whether its offering
is really what you want, for this is what it offers you.To obtain this you are willing
to attack the divinity of your brothers and thus lose sight of yours. And you are
willing to keep it hidden and to protect this idol, which you think will save you
from the dangers which the idol itself stands for, but which do not exist.
78
There are no idolaters in the Kingdom, but there is great appreciation for
every Soul which God created because of the calm knowledge that each one
is part of Him. God’s Son knows no idols, but he does know His Father. Health
in this world is the counterpart of value in Heaven. It is not my merit that I
contribute to you but my love, for you do not value yourselves. When you do
not value yourself, you become sick, but my value of you can heal you because
the value of God’s Son is one. When I said, “My peace I give unto you,” I meant
it. Peace came from God through me to you. It was for you, although you did
not ask.
79
When a brother is sick, it is because he is not asking for peace and therefore
does not know he has it. The acceptance of peace is the denial of illusion, and
sickness is an illusion. Yet every Son of God has the power to deny illusions
anywhere in the Kingdom merely by denying them completely in himself. I can
heal you because I know you. I know your value for you, and it is this value
that makes you whole. A whole mind is not idolatrous and does not know of
conflicting laws. I will heal you merely because I have only one message, and it is
true.Your faith in it will make you whole when you have faith in me.
80
I do not bring God’s message with deception, and you will learn this as you
learn that you always receive as much as you accept. You could accept peace now
for everyone you meet and offer them perfect freedom from all illusions because
you heard. But have no other gods before Him, or you will not hear. God is not
jealous of the gods you make, but you are.You would save them and serve them
because you believe that they made you.You think they are your father because
you are projecting onto them the fearful fact that you made them to replace God.
Yet when they seem to speak to you, remember that nothing can replace God,
and whatever replacements you have attempted are nothing.
188
Miracles
Very simply, then, you may believe you are afraid of nothingness, but you are
really afraid of nothing. And in that awareness you are healed. You will hear the
god you listen to. You made the god of sickness, and by making him, you made
yourself able to hear him.Yet you did not create him because he is not the Will of
the Father. He is therefore not eternal and will be unmade for you the instant you
signify your willingness to accept only the eternal. If God has but one Son, there
is but one God.You share reality with Him because reality is not divided.To accept
other gods before Him is to place other images before yourself.
82
You do not realize how much you listen to your gods and how vigilant
you are on their behalf.Yet they exist only because you honor them. Place honor
where it is due, and peace will be yours. It is your inheritance from your real
Father.You cannot make your father, and the father you made did not make you.
Honor is not due to illusions, for to honor them is to honor nothing.Yet fear is
not due them either, for nothing cannot be fearful.You have chosen to fear love
because of its perfect harmlessness, and because of this fear, you have been willing
to give up your own perfect helpfulness and your own perfect Help.
83
Only at the altar of God will you find peace. And this altar is in you because
God put it there. His Voice still calls you to return, and He will be heard when
you place no other gods before Him.You can give up the god of sickness for your
brothers; in fact, you would have to do so if you give him up for yourself. For if
you see him anywhere, you have accepted him. And if you accept him, you will
bow down and worship him because he was made as God’s replacement. He is
the belief that you can choose which god is real. Although it is perfectly clear that
this has nothing to do with reality, it is equally clear that it has everything to do
with reality as you perceive it.
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x.
Magic Versus Miracles
All magic is a form of reconciling the irreconcilable. All religion is the
recognition that the irreconcilable cannot be reconciled. Sickness and perfection
are irreconcilable. If God created you perfect, you are perfect. If you believe you
can be sick, you have placed other gods before Him. God is not at war with the
god of sickness you made, but you are. He is the symbol of willing against God,
and you are afraid of him because he cannot be reconciled with God’s Will. If you
attack him, you will make him real to you. But if you refuse to worship him in
whatever form he may appear to you and wherever you think you see him, he
will disappear into the nothingness out of which he was made.
85
Reality can dawn only on an unclouded mind. It is always there to be accepted,
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xi. The
but its acceptance depends on your willingness to have it. To know reality must
involve the willingness to judge unreality for what it is. This is the right use of
selective perception. To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and
because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to let it go. Knowledge cannot dawn
on a mind full of illusions because truth and illusions are irreconcilable. Truth is
whole and cannot be known by part of a mind.
86
The Sonship cannot be perceived as partly sick because to perceive it that way
is not to perceive it at all. If the Sonship is one, it is one in all respects. Oneness
cannot be divided. If you perceive other gods, your mind is split, and you will not
be able to limit the split because the split is the sign that you have removed part
of your mind from God’s Will, and this means it is out of control. To be out of
control is to be out of reason, and the mind does become unreasonable without
reason. This is merely a matter of definition. By defining the mind wrongly, you
perceive it as functioning wrongly.
87
God’s laws will keep your minds at peace because peace is His Will, and His
laws are established to uphold it. His are the laws of freedom, but yours are the
laws of bondage. Since freedom and bondage are irreconcilable, their laws cannot
be understood together.The laws of God work only for your good, and there are
no other laws beside His. Everything else is merely lawless and therefore chaotic.
Yet God Himself has protected everything He created by His laws. Therefore,
everything that is not under them does not exist. “Laws of chaos” are meaningless
by definition. Creation is perfectly lawful, and the chaotic is without meaning
because it is without God.You have given your peace to the gods you made, but
they are not there to take it from you, and you are not able to give it to them.
88
You are not free to give up freedom, but only to deny it.You cannot do what
God did not intend because what He did not intend does not happen. Your gods
do not bring chaos; you are endowing them with chaos and accepting it of them. All
this has never been. Nothing but the laws of God has ever operated, and nothing
except His Will will ever be.You were created through His laws and by His Will,
and the manner of your creation established you as creators. What you have
made is so unworthy of you that you could hardly want it if you were willing to
see it as it is.You will see nothing at all. And your vision will automatically look
beyond it to what is in you and all around you. Reality cannot break through
the obstructions you interpose, but it will envelop you completely when you let
them go.
89
When you have experienced the protection of God, the making of idols
becomes inconceivable. There are no strange images in the Mind of God, and
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Denial of God
what is not in His Mind cannot be in yours because you are of One Mind and
that Mind belongs to Him. It is yours because it belongs to Him, for ownership is
sharing to Him. And if it is so for Him, it is so for you. His definitions are His laws,
for by them He established the universe as what it is. No false gods you attempt
to interpose between yourself and your reality affect truth at all. Peace is yours
because God created you. And He created nothing else.
90
The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods and
who calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith because it is the
recognition that his brother can do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind,
a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle worker
has heard Him, he strengthens His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his
belief in sickness, which he does not share. The power of one mind can shine into
another because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere,
and it is eternal.
91
In many only the spark remains, for the Great Rays are obscured. Yet God
has kept the spark alive so that the rays can never be completely forgotten. If you
but see the little spark, you will learn of the greater light, for the rays are there
unseen. Perceiving the spark will heal, but knowing the light will create. Yet in
the returning the little light must be acknowledged first, for the separation was
a descent from magnitude to littleness. But the spark is still as pure as the great
light because it is the remaining call of creation. Put all your faith in it, and God
Himself will answer you.
xi. The
Denial
of
God
The rituals of the god of sickness are strange and very demanding. Joy is
never permitted, for depression is the sign of allegiance to him. Depression means
that you have foresworn God. Men are afraid of blasphemy, but they do not know
what it means.They do not realize that to deny God is to deny their own identity,
and in this sense the wages of sin is death. The sense is very literal; denial of life
perceives its opposite, as all forms of denial replace what is with what is not. No
one can really do this, but that you can think you can and believe you have is
beyond dispute.
93
Do not forget, however, that to deny God will inevitably result in projection,
and you will believe that others, and not yourself, have done this to you. You will
receive the message you give because it is the message you want.You may believe
that you judge your brothers by the messages they give you, but you have judged
them by the message you give to them. Do not attribute your denial of joy to
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them, or you cannot see the spark in them that could bring joy to you. It is the
denial of the spark that brings depression, and whenever you see your brothers
without it, you are denying God.
94
Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego’s religion. The god of sickness
obviously demands the denial of health because health is in direct opposition to
its own survival. But consider what this means to you. Unless you are sick, you
cannot keep the gods you made, for only in sickness could you possibly want
them. Blasphemy, then, is self-destructive, not God-destructive. It means that you
are willing not to know yourself in order to be sick.This is the offering which your
god demands because, having made him out of your insanity, he is an insane idea.
He has many forms, but although he may seem like many different things he is
but one idea—the denial of God.
95
Sickness and death entered the mind of God’s Son against His Will. The
“attack on God” made His Son think he was fatherless, and out of his depression,
he made the god of depression. This was his alternative to joy because he would
not accept the fact that, although he was a creator, he had been created. Yet the
Son is helpless without the Father, Who alone is his help. We said before that of
yourselves you can do nothing, but you are not of yourselves. If you were, what
you have made would be true, and you could never escape.
96
It is because you did not make yourselves that you need be troubled by
nothing. Your gods are nothing because your Father did not create them. You
cannot make creators who are unlike your Creator any more than He could have
created a Son who was unlike Him. If creation is sharing, it cannot create what
is unlike itself. It can share only what it is. Depression is isolation, and so it could
not have been created.
97
Son of God, you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken.Yet this
can be corrected, and God will help you, knowing that you could not sin against
Him.You denied Him because you loved Him, knowing that if you recognized your
love for Him, you could not deny Him.Your denial of Him therefore means that
you love Him and that you know He loves you. Remember that what you deny,
you must have known. And if you accept denial, you can accept its undoing.
98
Your Father has not denied you. He does not retaliate, but He does call to you
to return.When you think He has not answered your call, you have not answered
His. He calls to you from every part of the Sonship because of His love for His
Son. If you hear His message, He has answered you, and you will learn of Him
if you hear aright. The love of God is in everything He created, for His Son is
everywhere. Look with peace upon your brothers, and God will come rushing
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xi. The
Denial of God
into your heart in gratitude for your gift to Him.
99
Do not look to the god of sickness for healing but only to the God of
love, for healing is the acknowledgment of Him. When you acknowledge Him,
you will know that He has never ceased to acknowledge you and that in His
acknowledgment of you lies your Being. You are not sick, and you cannot die.
But you can confuse yourself with things that do. Remember, though, that to
do this is blasphemy, for it means that you are looking without love on God and
His creation, from which He cannot be separated. Only the eternal can be loved,
for love does not die. What is of God is His forever, and you are of God. Would
He allow Himself to suffer? And would He offer His Son anything that is not
acceptable to Him?
100
If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of
suffering.Yet to do this, you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not
because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment
of your Father is the acknowledgment of yourself as you are.Your Father created
you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of
any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your own mind
because of the power He gave it.Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it
can also deny what it creates because it is free.
101
You do not realize how much you have denied yourself, and how much God
in His love would not have it so. Yet He would not interfere with you because
He would not know His Son if he were not free. To interfere with you would
be to attack Himself, and God is not insane. When you denied Him, you were
insane.Would you have Him share your insanity? God will never cease to love His
Son, and His Son will never cease to love Him. That was the condition of His
Son’s creation, fixed forever in the Mind of God. To know that is sanity. To deny
it is insanity. God gave Himself to you in your creation, and His gifts are eternal.
Would you deny yourself to Him?
102
Out of your gifts to Him, the Kingdom will be restored to His Son. His Son
removed himself from His gift by refusing to accept what had been created for
him and what he himself had created in the Name of his Father. Heaven waits
for his return, for it was created as the dwelling place of God’s Son.You are not
at home anywhere else or in any other condition. Do not deny yourself the joy
which was created for you for the misery you have made for yourselves. God has
given you the means for undoing what you have made. Listen and you will learn
what you are.
103
If God knows His Children as wholly sinless, it is blasphemous to perceive
193
them as guilty. If God knows His Children as wholly without pain, it is blasphemous
to perceive suffering anywhere. If God knows His Children to be wholly joyous,
it is blasphemous to feel depressed. All of these illusions and the many other forms
which blasphemy may take are refusals to accept creation as it is. If God created
His Son perfect, that is how you must learn to see him to learn of his reality. And
as part of the Sonship, that is how you must see yourself to learn of yours.
104
Do not perceive anything God did not create, or you are denying Him. His is
the only Fatherhood, and it is yours only because He has given it to you.Your gifts
to yourself are meaningless, but your gifts to your creations are like His because
they are given in His Name. That is why your creations are as real as His. Yet
the real Fatherhood must be acknowledged if the real Son is to be known. You
believe that the sick things which you have made are your real creations because
you believe that the sick images you perceive are the Sons of God.
105
Only if you accept the Fatherhood of God will you have anything because
His fatherhood gave you everything.That is why to deny Him is to deny yourself.
Arrogance is the denial of love because love shares and arrogance withholds. As
long as both appear to you to be desirable, the concept of choice, which is not
of God, will remain with you. While this is not true in eternity, it is true in time,
so that while time lasts in your minds, there will be choices. Time itself was your
choice.
106
If you would remember eternity, you must learn to look only on the eternal. If
you allow yourselves to become preoccupied with the temporal, you are living in
time. As always, your choice is determined by what you value. Time and eternity
cannot both be real because they contradict each other. If you will accept only
what is timeless as real, you will begin to understand eternity and make it yours.
ten
God and the Ego
i.
Introduction
E
ither God or the ego is insane. If you will examine the evidence on both
sides fairly, you will realize that this must be true. Neither God nor the
ego proposes a partial thought system. Each is internally consistent, but they
are diametrically opposed in all respects so that partial allegiance is impossible.
Remember, too, that their results are as different as their foundations, and their
fundamentally irreconcilable natures cannot be reconciled by your vacillations.
Nothing alive is fatherless, for life is creation. Therefore, your decision is always
an answer to the question, “Who is my father?” And you will be faithful to the
father you choose.
10:2
Yet what would you say to someone who really believed this question
involves conflict? If you made the ego, how can the ego have made you? The
authority problem remains the only source of perceived conflict because the ego
was made out of the wish of God’s Son to father Him. The ego, then, is nothing
more than a delusional system in which you made your own father. Make no
mistake about this. It sounds insane when it is stated with perfect honesty, but
the ego never looks upon what it does with perfect honesty.Yet that is its insane
premise, which is carefully hidden in the dark cornerstone of its thought system.
And either the ego, which you made, is your father, or its whole thought system
will not stand.
ii.
Projection Versus Extension
You have made by projection, but God has created by extension. The
cornerstone of God’s creation is you, for His thought system is light. Remember
the rays that are there unseen. The more you approach the center of His thought
system, the clearer the light becomes. The closer you come to the ego’s thought
system, the darker and more obscure becomes the way.Yet even the little spark in
3
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Chapter 10: God and the Ego
your mind is enough to lighten it. Bring this light fearlessly with you and hold it
up to the foundation of the ego’s thought system bravely. Be willing to judge it
with perfect honesty. Open the dark cornerstone of terror on which it rests and
bring it out into the light. There you will see that it rests on meaninglessness and
that everything of which you have been afraid was based on nothing.
4
My brother, you are part of God and part of me.When you have at last looked
at the ego’s foundation without shrinking, you will also have looked upon ours.
I come to you from our Father to offer you everything again. Do not refuse it
in order to keep a dark cornerstone hidden, for its protection will not save you.
I give you the lamp and I will go with you.You will not take this journey alone. I
will lead you to your true Father, who hath need of you as I have. Will you not
answer the call of love with joy?
5
You have learned your need of healing. Would you bring anything else to
the Sonship, recognizing your need of healing for yourself? For in this lies the
beginning of knowledge, the foundation on which God will help you build again
the thought system which you share with Him. Not one stone you place upon
it but will be blessed by Him, for you will be restoring the holy dwelling place
of His Son, where He wills His Son to be and where he is. In whatever part of
the mind of God’s Son you restore this reality, you restore it to yourself. For you
dwell in the Mind of God with your brother, for God Himself did not will to be
alone.
6
To be alone is to be separated from infinity, but how can this be if infinity has
no end? No one can be beyond the limitless because what has no limits must be
everywhere. There are no beginnings and no endings in God, Whose universe is
Himself. Can you exclude yourself from the universe or from God, Who is the
universe? I and my Father are one with you, for you are part of us. Do you really
believe that part of God can be missing or lost to Him?
7
If you were not part of God, His Will would not be unified. Is this conceivable?
Can part of His Mind contain nothing? If your place in His Mind cannot be
filled by anyone except you, and your filling it was your creation, without you there
would be an empty place in God’s Mind. Extension cannot be blocked, and it has
no voids. It continues forever, however much it is denied.Your denial of its reality
arrests it in time but not in eternity.That is why your creations have not ceased to
be extended and why so much is waiting for your return.
8
Waiting is possible only in time, but time has no meaning. You who made
delay can leave time behind simply by recognizing that neither beginnings nor
endings were created by the Eternal, Who placed no limits on His creation nor
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ii. Projection Versus
Extension
upon those who create like Him.You do not know this simply because you have
tried to limit what He created, and so you believe that all creation is limited.
How, then, could you know your creations, having denied infinity? The laws of
the universe do not permit contradiction. What holds for God holds for you. If
you believe you are absent from God, you will believe that He is absent from
you.
9
Infinity is meaningless without you, and you are meaningless without God.There
is no end to God and His Son, for we are the universe. God is not incomplete,
and He is not childless. Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son
like Himself. Do not deny Him His Son, for your unwillingness to accept His
Fatherhood has denied you yours. See His creations as His Son, for yours were
created in honor of Him. The universe of love does not stop because you do not
see it, and your closed eyes have not lost the ability to see. Look upon the glory
of His creation, and you will learn what God has kept for you.
10
God has given you a place in His Mind which is yours forever. Yet you
could keep it only by giving it, as it was given you. Could you be alone there if
it was given you because God did not will to be alone? God’s Mind cannot be
lessened. It can only be increased, and everything He creates has the function of
creating. Love does not limit, and what it creates is not limited. To give without
limit is God’s Will for you because only this can bring you the joy which is His
and which He wills to share with you.Your love is as boundless as His because it
is His.
11
Could any part of God be without His love and could any part of His love be
contained? God is your heritage because His one gift is Himself. How can you
give except like Him if you would know His gift to you? Give, then, without
limit and without end to learn how much He has given you.Your ability to accept
Him depends on your willingness to give as He gives.Your fatherhood and your
Father are one. God willed to create, and your will is His. It follows, then, that you
will to create since your will follows from His. And being an extension of His
Will, yours must be the same.
12
Yet what you will you do not know. This is not strange when you realize
that to deny is to “not know.” God’s Will is that you are His Son. By denying
this, you denied your own will and therefore do not know what it is. The reason
you must ask what God’s Will is in everything is merely because it is yours.You
do not know what it is, but the Holy Spirit remembers it for you. Ask Him,
therefore, what God’s Will is for you, and He will tell you yours. It cannot be too
often repeated that you do not know it. Whenever what the Holy Spirit tells you
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iii. The Willingness
appears to be coercive, it is only because you do not recognize your own will.
13
The projection of the ego makes it appear as if God’s Will is outside yourself
and therefore not yours. In this interpretation, it is possible for God’s Will and
yours to conflict. God then may seem to demand of you what you do not want to
give and thus deprive you of what you want. Would God, who wants only your
will, be capable of this? Your will is His Life, which He has given to you. Even
in time you cannot live apart from Him, for sleep is not death. What He created
can sleep, but it cannot die. Immortality is His Will for His Son and His Son’s will
for himself. God’s Son cannot will death for himself because His Father is Life and
His Son is like Him. Creation is your will because it is His.
14
You cannot be happy unless you do what you will truly, and you cannot
change this because it is immutable. It is immutable by God’s Will and yours, for
otherwise His Will would not have been extended.You are afraid to know God’s
Will because you believe it is not yours. This belief is your whole sickness and
your whole fear. Every symptom of sickness and fear arises here because this is
the belief that makes you want not to know. Believing this, you hide in darkness,
denying that the light is in you.
15
You are asked to trust the Holy Spirit only because He speaks for you. He is
the Voice for God, but never forget that God did not will to be alone. He shares
His Will with you; He does not thrust it upon you. Always remember that what
He gives, He holds, so that nothing He gives can contradict Him.You who share
His Life must share it to know it, for sharing is knowing. Blessed are you who
learn that to hear the Will of your Father is to know your own. For it is your will
to be like Him, Whose Will it is that it be so. God’s Will is that His Son be one,
and united with Him in His Oneness.That is why healing is the beginning of the
recognition that your will is His.
iii. The Willingness
For Healing
If sickness is separation, the will to heal and be healed is the first step toward
recognizing what you truly want. Every attack is a step away from this, and every
healing thought brings it closer.The Son of God has both Father and Son because
he is both Father and Son. To unite having and being is only to unite your will
with His, for He wills you Himself. And you will yourself to Him because, in
your perfect understanding of Him, you know there is but One Will. Yet when
you attack any part of God and His Kingdom, your understanding is not perfect,
and what you will is therefore lost to you.
16
198
For Healing
Healing thus becomes a lesson in understanding, and the more you practice it,
the better teacher and learner you become. If you have denied truth, what better
witnesses to its reality could you have than those who have been healed by it?
But be sure to count yourself among them, for in your willingness to join them
is your healing accomplished. Every miracle which you accomplish speaks to
you of the Fatherhood of God. Every healing thought which you accept, either
from your brother or in your own mind, teaches you that you are God’s Son. In
every hurtful thought you hold, wherever you perceive it, lies the denial of God’s
Fatherhood and your Sonship.
18
And denial is as total as love. You cannot deny part of yourself because the
remainder will seem to be unintegrated and therefore without meaning. And
being without meaning to you, you will not understand it. To deny meaning
must be to fail to understand.You can heal only yourself, for only God’s Son needs
healing. He needs it because he does not understand himself and therefore knows
not what he does. Having forgotten his will, he does not know what he wants.
19
Healing is a sign that he wants to make whole. And this willingness opens his
own ears to the Voice of the Holy Spirit, whose message is wholeness. He will
enable you to go far beyond the healing you would undertake, for beside your
small willingness to make whole, He will lay His own complete Will and make
yours whole. What can the Son of God not accomplish with the Fatherhood of
God in him? And yet the invitation must come from you, for you have surely
learned that whom you invite as your guest will abide with you.
20
The Holy Spirit cannot speak to an unwelcoming host because He will not
be heard. The Eternal Guest remains, but His Voice grows faint in alien company.
He needs your protection, but only because your care is a sign that you want Him.
Think like Him ever so slightly, and the little spark becomes a blazing light that
fills your mind so that He becomes your only Guest. Whenever you ask the ego
to enter, you lessen His welcome. He will remain, but you have allied yourself
against Him.Whatever journey you choose to take, He will go with you, waiting.
You can safely trust His patience, for He cannot leave a part of God.Yet you need
far more than patience.
21
You will never rest until you know your function and fulfill it, for only in this
can your will and your Father’s be wholly joined. To have Him is to be like Him,
and He has given Himself to you. You who have God must be as God, for His
function became yours with His gift. Invite this knowledge back into your minds,
and let nothing that will obscure it enter. The Guest whom God sent you will
teach you how to do this if you but recognize the little spark and are willing to
17
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iv. From
let it grow.Your willingness need not be perfect because His is. If you will merely
offer Him a little place, He will lighten it so much that you will gladly extend it.
And by this extending, you will begin to remember creation.
22
Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God? You will accept only whom
you invite. You are free to determine who shall be your guest and how long he
shall remain with you. Yet this is not real freedom, for it still depends on how
you see it. The Holy Spirit is there, although He cannot help you without your
invitation, and the ego is nothing whether you invite it in or not. Real freedom
depends on welcoming reality, and of your guests, only He is real. Know, then,
who abides with you merely by recognizing what is there already and do not be
satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of God is in you.
iv.
From Darkness
to
Light
When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself.Your Comforter will
rest you, but you cannot. You do not know how, for if you did you could never
have grown weary. Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in
any way, for that is not God’s Will for His Son. Pain is not of Him, for He knows
no attack and His peace surrounds you silently. God is very quiet, for there is no
conflict in Him. Conflict is the root of all evil, for being blind, it does not see
whom it attacks.Yet it always attacks the Son of God, and the Son of God is you.
24
God’s Son is indeed in need of comfort, for he knows not what he does,
believing his will is not his own. The Kingdom is his, and yet he wanders
homelessly. At home in God, he is lonely, and amid all his brothers, he is friendless.
Would God let this be real if He did not will to be alone Himself? And if your
will is His, it cannot be true of you because it is not true of Him. Oh, my children,
if you knew what God wills for you, your joy would be complete! And what He
wills has happened, for it was always true.
25
When the light comes and you have said, “God’s Will is mine,” you will see
such beauty that you will know it is not of you. Out of your joy you will create
beauty in His name, for your joy could no more be contained than His.The bleak
little world will vanish into nothingness, and your heart will be so filled with
joy that it will leap into Heaven and into the Presence of God. I cannot tell you
what this will be like, for your hearts are not ready.Yet I can tell you and remind
you often that what God wills for Himself He wills for you, and what He wills
for you is yours.
26
The way is not hard, but it is very different. Yours is the way of pain, of
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Darkness to Light
which God knows nothing. That way is hard indeed and very lonely. Fear and
grief are your guests, and they go with you and abide with you on the way. But
the dark journey is not the way of God’s Son. Walk in light, and do not see the
dark companions, for they are not fit companions for the Son of God, who was
created of light and in light.The Great Light always surrounds you and shines out
from you. How can you see the dark companions in a light such as this? If you see
them, it is only because you are denying the light. But deny them instead, for the
light is here, and the way is clear.
27
God hides nothing from His Son, even though His Son would hide himself.
Yet the Son of God cannot hide his glory, for God wills him to be glorious and
gave him the light that shines in him.You will never lose your way, for God leads
you. When you wander you but undertake a journey which is not real. The dark
companions, the dark way, are all illusions. Turn toward the light, for the little
spark in you is part of a light so great that it can sweep you out of all darkness
forever. For your Father is your Creator, and you are like Him.
28
The children of light cannot abide in darkness, for darkness is not in them.
Do not be deceived by the dark comforters, and never let them enter the mind of
God’s Son, for they have no place in His temple. When you are tempted to deny
Him, remember that there are no other gods that you can place before Him, and
accept His Will for you in peace. For you cannot accept it otherwise.
29
Only God’s Comforter can comfort you. In the quiet of His temple, He waits
to give you the peace that is yours. Give His peace that you may enter the temple
and find it waiting for you. But be holy in the Presence of God, or you will not
know that you are there. For what is unlike God cannot enter His Mind because it
was not His Thought and therefore does not belong to Him. And your minds must
be as pure as His if you would know what belongs to you. Guard carefully His
temple, for He Himself dwells there and abides in peace.You cannot enter God’s
Presence with the dark companions beside you, but you also cannot enter alone.
30
All your brothers must enter with you, for until you have accepted them, you
cannot enter. For you cannot understand Wholeness unless you are whole, and no
part of the Son can be excluded if he would know the Wholeness of his Father.
In your mind, you can accept the whole Sonship and bless it with the light your
Father gave it.Then you will be worthy to dwell in the temple with Him because
it is your will not to be alone. God blessed His Son forever. If you will bless him
in time, you will be in eternity. Time cannot separate you from God if you use it
on behalf of the eternal.
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vi. The
v. The Inheritance of
God’s Son
Never forget that the Sonship is your salvation, for the Sonship is your Soul.
As God’s creation it is yours, and belonging to you, it is His.Your Soul does not
need salvation, but your mind needs to learn what salvation is.You are not saved
from anything, but you are saved for glory. Glory is your inheritance, given your
Soul by its Creator that you might extend it.Yet if you hate part of your own Soul,
all your understanding is lost because you are looking on what God created as
yourself without love. And since what He created is part of Him, you are denying
Him His place in His own altar.
32
Could you try to make God homeless and know that you are at home?
Can the Son deny the Father without believing that the Father has denied him?
God’s laws hold only for your protection, and they never hold in vain. What you
experience when you deny your Father is still for your protection, for the power
of your will cannot be lessened without the intervention of God against it, and
any limitation on your power is not the Will of God. Therefore, look only to the
power that God gave to save you, remembering that it is yours because it is His,
and join with your brothers in His peace.
33
The peace of your Soul lies in its limitlessness. Limit the peace you share, and
your own Soul must be unknown to you. Every altar to God is part of your Soul
because the light He created is one with Him. Would you cut off a brother from
the light that is yours? You would not do so if you realized that you can only
darken your own mind. As you bring him back, so will your mind return. That is
the law of God for the protection of the wholeness of His Son.
34
Only you can deprive yourself of anything. Do not oppose this realization, for it
is truly the beginning of the dawn of light. Remember also that the denial of this
simple fact takes many forms, and these you must learn to recognize and to oppose
steadfastly and without exception. This is a crucial step in the reawakening. The
beginning phases of this reversal are often quite painful for, as blame is withdrawn
from without, there is a strong tendency to harbor within. It is difficult at first
to realize that this is exactly the same thing, for there is no distinction between
within and without.
35
If your brothers are part of you and you blame them for your deprivation,
you are blaming yourself. And you cannot blame yourself without blaming them.
That is why blame must be undone, not re-allocated. Lay it to yourself and you
cannot know yourself, for only the ego blames at all. Self-blame is therefore ego
identification and as strong an ego defense as blaming others. You cannot enter
God’s Presence if you attack his Son. When His Son lifts his voice in praise of his
31
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Dynamics of the Ego
Creator, he will hear the Voice of his Father. Yet the Creator cannot be praised
without His Son, for their glory is shared, and they are glorified together.
36
Christ is at God’s altar, waiting to welcome His Son. But come wholly
without condemnation, for otherwise you will believe that the door is barred
and you cannot enter. The door is not barred, and it is impossible for you to be
unable to enter the place where God would have you be. But love yourself with
the love of Christ, for so does your Father love you. You can refuse to enter, but
you cannot bar the door which Christ holds open. Come unto me who holds it
open for you, for while I live it cannot be shut, and I live forever. God is my life
and yours, and nothing is denied by God to His Son.
37
At God’s altar Christ waits for the restoration of Himself in you. God knows
His Son as wholly blameless as Himself, and He is approached through the
appreciation of His Son. Christ waits for your acceptance of Him as yourself and
of His wholeness as yours. For Christ is the Son of God who lives in his Creator
and shines with His glory. Christ is the extension of the love and the loveliness
of God, as perfect as his Creator and at peace with Him.
38
Blessed is the Son of God, whose radiance is of his Father and whose glory
he wills to share as his Father shares it with him. There is no condemnation in
the Son, for there is no condemnation in the Father. Sharing the perfect love of
the Father, the Son must share what belongs to Him, for otherwise he will not
know the Father or the Son. Peace be unto you who rest in God and in whom
the whole Sonship rests.
vi. The
Dynamics
of the
Ego
No one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them, for not looking
is the way they are protected. There is no need to shrink from illusions, for they
cannot be dangerous. We are ready to look more closely at the ego’s thought
system because together we have the lamp that will dispel it, and since you realize
you do not want it, you must be ready. Let us be very calm in doing this, for we are
merely looking honestly for truth. The “dynamics” of the ego will be our lesson
for a while, for we must look first at this to look beyond it since you have made it
real. We will undo this error quietly together and then look beyond it to truth.
40
What is healing but the removal of all that stands in the way of knowledge?
And how else can one dispel illusions except by looking at them directly without
protecting them? Be not afraid, therefore, for what you will be looking at is
the source of fear, but you have surely learned by now that fear is not real. We
39
203
have accepted the fact already that its effects can be dispelled merely by denying
their reality. The next step is obviously to recognize that what has no effects does
not exist. Laws do not operate in a vacuum, and what leads to nothing has not
happened. If reality is recognized by its extension, what extends to nothing cannot
be real.
41
Do not be afraid, then, to look upon fear, for it cannot be seen. Clarity undoes
confusion by definition, and to look upon darkness through light must dispel it.
Let us begin this lesson in “ego dynamics” by understanding that the term itself
does not mean anything. In fact, it contains exactly the contradiction in terms
which makes it meaningless. “Dynamics” implies the power to do something, and
the whole separation fallacy lies in the belief that the ego has the power to do
anything. The ego is fearful to you because you believe this. Yet the truth is very
simple:
42
All power is of God.What is not of Him has no power to do anything.
When we look at the ego, then, we are not considering dynamics but delusions.
We can surely regard a delusional system without fear, for it cannot have any
effects if its source is not true. Fear becomes more obviously inappropriate if one
recognizes the ego’s goal, which is so clearly senseless that any effort exerted on
its behalf is necessarily expended on nothing. The ego’s goal is quite explicitly ego
autonomy. From the beginning, then, its purpose is to be separate, sufficient unto
itself, and independent of any power except its own. This is why it is the symbol
of separation.
44
Every idea has a purpose, and its purpose is always the natural extension
of what it is. Everything that stems from the ego is the natural outcome of its
central belief, and the way to undo its results is merely to recognize that their
source is not natural, being out of accord with your true nature. We once said that
to will contrary to God is wishful thinking and not real willing. His Will is one
because the extension of His Will cannot be unlike itself. The real conflict you
experience, then, is between the ego’s idle wishes and the Will of God, which you
share. Can this be a real conflict?
45
Yours is the independence of creation, not of autonomy.Your whole creative
function lies in your complete dependence on God, Whose function He shares
with you. By His willingness to share it, He became as dependent on you as you
are on Him. Do not ascribe the ego’s arrogance to Him, Who wills not to be
independent of you. He has included you in His Autonomy. Can you believe that
autonomy is meaningful apart from Him? The belief in ego autonomy is costing
43
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vi. The
Dynamics of the Ego
you the knowledge of your dependence on God in which your freedom lies. The
ego sees all dependency as threatening and has twisted even your longing for God
into a means of establishing itself. But do not be deceived by its interpretation of
your conflict.
46
The ego always attacks on behalf of separation. Believing it has the power to
do this, it does nothing else because its goal of autonomy is nothing else.The ego
is totally confused about reality, but it does not lose sight of its goal. It is much
more vigilant than you are because it is perfectly certain of its purpose. You are
confused because you do not know yours.
47
What you must learn to recognize is that the last thing the ego wishes you
to realize is that you are afraid of it. For if the ego gives rise to fear, it is diminishing
your independence and weakening your power.Yet its one claim to your allegiance
is that it can give power to you. Without this belief, you would not listen to it at
all. How, then, can its existence continue if you realize that, by accepting it, you
are belittling yourself and depriving yourself of power?
48
The ego can and does allow you to regard yourself as supercilious, unbelieving,
“light-hearted,” distant, emotionally shallow, callous, uninvolved, and even
desperate, but not really afraid. Minimizing fear but not its undoing is the ego’s
constant effort and is indeed the skill at which it is very ingenious. How can it
preach separation without upholding it through fear, and would you listen to it if
you recognized this is what it is doing?
49
Your recognition that whatever seems to separate you from God is only fear,
regardless of the form it takes and quite apart from how the ego wants you to
experience it, is therefore the basic ego threat. Its dream of autonomy is shaken to
its foundation by this awareness. For though you may countenance a false idea of
independence, you will not accept the cost of fear if you recognize it.Yet this is the
cost, and the ego cannot minimize it. For if you overlook love, you are overlooking
yourself, and you must fear unreality because you have denied yourself. By believing
that you have successfully attacked truth, you are believing that attack has power.
Very simply, then, you have become afraid of yourself. And no one wills to learn
what he believes would destroy him.
50
If the ego’s goal of autonomy could be accomplished, God’s purpose could
be defeated, and this is impossible. Only by learning what fear is, can you finally
learn to distinguish the possible from the impossible and the false from the
true. According to the ego’s teaching, its goal can be accomplished, and God’s
purpose can not. According to the Holy Spirit’s teaching, only God’s purpose is
accomplishment, and it is already accomplished.
205
vii. Experience and
God is as dependent on you as you are on Him because His autonomy
encompasses yours and is therefore incomplete without it. You can only establish
your autonomy by identifying with Him and fulfilling your function as it exists in
truth. The ego believes that to accomplish its goal is happiness. But it is given you
to know that God’s function is yours and happiness cannot be found apart from
your joint will. Recognize only that the ego’s goal, which you have pursued quite
diligently, has merely brought you fear, and it becomes difficult to maintain that
fear is happiness.
52
Upheld by fear, this is what the ego would have you believe.Yet God’s Son is
not insane and cannot believe it. Let him but recognize it, and he will not accept it.
For only the insane would choose fear in place of love, and only the insane could
believe that love can be gained by attack. But the sane know that only attack
could produce fear from which the love of God completely protects them.
53
The ego analyzes; the Holy Spirit accepts.The appreciation of wholeness comes
only through acceptance, for to analyze means to separate out. The attempt to
understand totality by breaking it up is clearly the characteristically contradictory
approach of the ego to everything. Never forget that the ego believes that power,
understanding, and truth lie in separation, and to establish this belief it must attack.
Unaware that the belief cannot be established and obsessed with the conviction
that separation is salvation, the ego attacks everything it perceives by breaking
it up into small and disconnected parts without meaningful relationships and
thus without meaning. The ego will always substitute chaos for meaning, for if
separation is salvation, harmony is threat.
54
The ego’s interpretation of the laws of perception are, and would have to be, the
exact opposite of the Holy Spirit’s.The ego focuses on error and overlooks truth. It
makes real every mistake it perceives, and with characteristically circular reasoning
concludes that, because of the mistake, consistent truth must be meaningless. The
next step, then, is obvious. If consistent truth is meaningless, inconsistency must be
true if truth has meaning. Holding error clearly in mind and protecting what it
has made real, the ego proceeds to the next step in its thought system—that error
is real, and truth is error.
55
The ego makes no attempt to understand this,and it is clearly not understandable,
but the ego does make every attempt to demonstrate it, and this it does constantly.
Analyzing to attack meaning, the ego does succeed in overlooking it and is left
with a series of fragmented perceptions which it unifies on behalf of itself. This,
then, becomes the universe it perceives. And it is this universe which, in turn,
becomes its demonstration of its own reality.
51
206
Perception
Do not underestimate the appeal of the ego’s demonstrations to those who
would listen. Selective perception chooses its witnesses carefully, and its witnesses
are consistent. The case for insanity is strong to the insane. For reasoning ends at
its beginning, and no thought system transcends its source.Yet reasoning without
meaning cannot demonstrate anything, and those who are convinced by it must
be deluded. Can the ego teach truly when it overlooks truth? Can it perceive what
it has denied? Its witnesses do attest to its denial but hardly to what it has denied!
The ego looks straight at the Father and does not see Him, for it has denied His
Son.
57
Would you remember the Father? Accept His Son, and you will remember
Him. Nothing can demonstrate that His Son is unworthy, for nothing can prove
that a lie is true. What you see of His Son through the eyes of the ego is a
demonstration that His Son does not exist, yet where the Son is, the Father
must be. Accept what God does not deny, and He will demonstrate its truth. The
witnesses for God stand in His light and behold what He created. Their silence
is the sign that they have beheld God’s Son, and in the Presence of Christ they
need demonstrate nothing, for Christ speaks to them of Himself and of His
Father. They are silent because Christ speaks to them, and it is His words that
they speak.
58
Every brother you meet becomes a witness for Christ or for the ego,
depending on what you perceive in him. Everyone convinces you of what you
want to perceive and of the reality of the kingdom you have chosen for your
vigilance. Everything you perceive is a witness to the thought system you want to
be true. Every brother has the power to release you if you will to be free.You cannot
accept false witness of him unless you have evoked false witnesses against him. If
he speaks not of Christ to you, you spoke not of Christ to him.You hear but your
own voice, and if Christ speaks through you, you will hear Him.
56
vii.
Experience
and
Perception
It is impossible not to believe what you see, but it is equally impossible to
see what you do not believe. Perceptions are built up on the basis of experience,
and experience leads to beliefs. It is not until beliefs are fixed that perceptions
stabilize. In effect, then, what you believe, you do see. That is what I meant when
I said, “Blessed are ye who have not seen and still believe,” for those who believe
in the resurrection will see it. The resurrection is the complete triumph of Christ
over the ego, not by attack but by transcendence. For Christ does rise above the
ego and all its works and ascends to the Father and His Kingdom.
59
207
vii. Experience and
Would you join in the resurrection or the crucifixion? Would you condemn
your brothers or free them? Would you transcend your prison and ascend to the
Father? For these questions are all the same and are answered together. There has
been much confusion about what perception means because the same word is
used both for awareness and for the interpretation of awareness.Yet you cannot be
aware without interpretation, and what you perceive is your interpretation. This
course is perfectly clear. You do not see it clearly because you are interpreting
against it and therefore do not believe it. And if belief determines perception, you
do not perceive what it means and therefore do not accept it.
61
Yet different experiences lead to different beliefs, and experience teaches. I
am leading you to a new kind of experience, which you will become less and less
willing to deny. Learning of Christ is easy, for to perceive with Him involves no
strain at all. His perceptions are your natural awareness, and it is only distortions
which you introduce that tire you. Let the Christ in you interpret for you, and
do not try to limit what you see by narrow little beliefs which are unworthy of
God’s Son. For until Christ comes into His own, the Son of God will see himself
as fatherless.
62
I am your resurrection and your life.You live in me because you live in God.
And everyone lives in you, as you live in everyone. Can you, then, perceive
unworthiness in a brother and not perceive it in yourself? And can you perceive it
in yourself and not perceive it in God? Believe in the resurrection because it has
been accomplished, and it has been accomplished in you. This is as true now as it
will ever be, for the resurrection is the Will of God, which knows no time and
no exceptions. But make no exceptions yourself, or you will not perceive what
has been accomplished for you. For we ascend unto the Father together, as it was
in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, for such is the nature of God’s Son as
His Father created him.
63
Do not underestimate the power of the devotion of God’s Son nor the
power of the god he worships over him. For he places himself at the altar of his
god, whether it be the god he made or the God who created him. That is why
his slavery is as complete as his freedom, for he will obey only the god he accepts.
The god of the crucifixion demands that he crucify and his worshipers obey. In
his name they crucify themselves, believing that the power of the Son of God is
born of sacrifice and pain. The God of the resurrection demands nothing, for He
does not will to take away. He does not require obedience, for obedience implies
submission. He would only have you learn your own will and follow it, not in the
spirit of sacrifice and submission, but in the gladness of freedom.
60
208
Perception
Resurrection must compel your allegiance gladly because it is the symbol of
joy. Its whole compelling power lies in the fact that it represents what you want to
be. The freedom to leave behind everything that hurts you and humbles you and
frightens you cannot be thrust upon you, but it can be offered you through the
grace of God. And you can accept it by His grace, for God is gracious to His Son,
accepting him without question as His own. Who, then, is your own? The Father
has given you all that is His, and He Himself is yours with them. Guard them in
their resurrection, for otherwise you will not awake in God safely surrounded by
what is yours forever.
65
You will not find peace until you have removed the nails from the hands of
God’s Son and taken the last thorn from his forehead.The love of God surrounds
His Son, whom the god of the crucifixion condemns. Teach not that I died in
vain. Teach rather that I did not die by demonstrating that I live in you. For the
undoing of the crucifixion of God’s Son is the work of the redemption, in which
everyone has a part of equal value. God does not judge His blameless Son. Having
given Himself to him, how could it be otherwise?
66
You have nailed yourself to a cross and placed a crown of thorns upon your
own head. Yet you cannot crucify God’s Son, for the Will of God cannot die.
His Son has been redeemed from his own crucifixion, and you cannot assign to
death whom God has given eternal life. The dream of crucifixion still lies heavy
on your eyes, but what you see in dreams is not reality. While you perceive the
Son of God as crucified, you are asleep. And as long as you believe that you can
crucify him, you are only having nightmares.You who are beginning to wake are
still aware of dreams and have not yet forgotten them. The forgetting of dreams
and the awareness of Christ comes with the awakening of others to share your
redemption.
67
You will awaken to your own call, for the Call to awake is within you. If I
live in you, you are awake.Yet you must see the works I do through you, or you
will not perceive that I have done them unto you. Do not set limits on what you
believe I can do through you, or you will not accept what I can do for you. For it
is done already, and unless you give all that you have received, you will not know
that your Redeemer liveth and that you have awakened with Him. Redemption
is recognized only by sharing it.
68
God’s Son is saved. Bring only this awareness to the Sonship, and you will
have a part in the redemption as valuable as mine. For your part must be like mine
if you learn it of me. If you believe that yours is limited, you are limiting mine.
There is no order of difficulty in miracles because all of God’s Sons are of equal
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viii. The
value, and their equality is their oneness. The whole power of God is in every
part of Him, and nothing contradictory to His Will is either great or small. What
does not exist has no size and no measure. To God all things are possible. And to
Christ it is given to be like the Father.
viii. The
Problem
and the
Answer
The world as you perceive it cannot have been created by the Father, for the
world is not as you see it. God created only the eternal, and everything you see
is perishable. Therefore, there must be another world which you do not see. The
Bible speaks of a new Heaven and a new earth, yet this cannot be literally true,
for the eternal are not re-created. To perceive anew is merely to perceive again,
implying that before, or in the interval, you were not perceiving at all.What, then,
is the world that awaits your perception when you see it?
70
Every loving thought that the Son of God ever had is eternal.Those which his
mind perceived in this world are the world’s only reality.They are still perceptions
because he still believes that he is separate. Yet they are eternal because they are
loving. And being loving, they are like the Father and therefore cannot die. The
real world can actually be perceived. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive
nothing else. For if you perceive both good and evil, you are accepting both the
false and the true and making no distinction between them.
71
The ego sees some good but never only good. That is why its perceptions are
so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely, for that you could not accept,
but it always adds something that is not real to the real, thus confusing illusion and
reality. For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth and illusion,
you cannot tell which is true. To establish your personal autonomy, you tried to
create unlike your Father, believing what you made to be capable of being unlike
Him.Yet everything in what you have made that is true is like Him. Only this is
the real world, and perceiving only this will lead you to the real Heaven because
it will make you capable of understanding it.
72
The perception of goodness is not knowledge, but the denial of the opposite
of goodness enables you to perceive a condition in which opposites do not exist.
And this is the condition of knowledge. Without this awareness, you have not
met its conditions, and until you do you will not know that it is yours already.
You have made many ideas which you have placed between yourselves and your
Creator, and these beliefs are the world as you perceive it.Truth is not absent here,
but it is obscure.You do not know the difference between what you have made
and what God created, and so you do not know the difference between what you
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Problem and the Answer
have made and what you have created.
73
To believe that you can perceive the real world is to believe that you can
know yourself. You can know God because it is His Will to be known. The real
world is all that the Holy Spirit has saved for you out of what you have made,
and to perceive only this is salvation because it is the recognition that reality is
only what is true.
74
This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel that a course which, in
the end, teaches nothing more than that only reality is true is necessary. But do you
believe it? When you have perceived the real world, you will recognize that you
did not believe it.Yet the swiftness with which your new and only real perception
will be translated into knowledge will leave you only an instant to realize that
this judgment is true.
75
And then everything you made will be forgotten, the good and bad, the
false and the true. For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world
will vanish from your sight. The end of the world is not its destruction, but its
translation into Heaven. The re-interpretation of the world is the transfer of all
perception to knowledge. The Bible tells you to become as little children. Little
children recognize that they do not understand what they perceive, and so they
ask what it means. Do not make the mistake of believing that you understand
what you perceive, for its meaning is lost to you.Yet the Holy Spirit has saved its
meaning for you, and if you will let Him interpret it for you, He will restore what
you have thrown away. As long as you think you know its meaning, you will see
no need to ask it of Him.
76
You do not know the meaning of anything you perceive. Not one thought
you hold is wholly true. The recognition of this is your firm beginning. You are
not misguided; you have accepted no guide at all. Instruction in perception is
your great need, for you understand nothing. Recognize this but do not accept
it, for understanding is your inheritance. Perceptions are learned, and you are
not without a Teacher. Yet your willingness to learn of Him depends on your
willingness to question everything you have learned of yourself, for you who have
learned amiss should not be your own teachers.
77
No one can withhold truth except from himself.Yet God will not refuse the
answer He gave you. Ask, then, for what is yours but which you did not make,
and do not defend yourself against truth. You made the problem which God has
answered. Ask yourselves, therefore, but one simple question—
78
Do I want the problem, or do I want the answer?
211
Decide for the answer and you will have it, for you will see it as it is, and it
is yours already.
80
You complain that this course is not sufficiently specific for you to understand
it and use it.Yet it has been very specific, and you have not done what it specifically
advocates. This is not a course in the play of ideas, but in their practical application.
Nothing could be more specific than to be told very clearly that if you ask you
will receive. The Holy Spirit will answer every specific problem as long as you
believe that problems are specific. His answer is both many and one, as long as you
believe that the one is many. Realize that you are afraid of His specificity for fear
of what you think it will demand of you. Yet only by asking will you learn that
nothing that is of God demands anything of you. God gives; He does not take.
81
You are refusing to ask because you believe that asking is taking, and you do
not perceive it as sharing. The Holy Spirit will give you only what is yours and
will take nothing in return. For what is yours is everything, and you share it with
God.This is its reality.Would the Holy Spirit,Who wills only to restore, be capable
of misinterpreting the question you must ask to learn His answer?
82
You have heard the answer, but you have misunderstand the question. You have
believed that to ask for guidance of the Holy Spirit is to ask for deprivation. Little
Children of God, you do not understand your Father.You believe in a world that
takes because you believe that you can get by taking. And by that perception, you
have lost sight of the real world.You are afraid of the world as you see it, but the
real world is still yours for the asking. Do not deny it to yourself, for it can only
free you. Nothing of God will enslave His Son, whom He created free and whose
freedom is protected by His Being.
83
Blessed are you who will ask the truth of God without fear, for only thus can
you learn that His answer is the release from fear. Beautiful Child of God, you are
asking only for what I promised you. Do you believe I would deceive you? The
Kingdom of Heaven is within you. Believe that the truth is in me, for I know that
it is in you. God’s Sons have nothing which they do not share. Ask for truth of
any Son of God, and you have asked it of me. No one of us but has the answer
in him, to give to anyone who asks it of him. Ask anything of God’s Son and His
Father will answer you, for Christ is not deceived in His Father, and His Father
is not deceived in Him.
84
Do not, then, be deceived in your brother and see only his loving thoughts
as his reality, for by denying that his mind is split, you will heal yours. Accept
him as his Father accepts him and heal him unto Christ, for Christ is his healing
and yours. Christ is the Son of God, who is in no way separate from His Father,
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viii. The
Problem and the Answer
whose every thought is as loving as the Thought of His Father by which He
was created. Be not deceived in God’s Son, for thereby you must be deceived
in yourself. And being deceived in yourself, you are deceived in your Father in
Whom no deceit is possible.
85
In the real world there is no sickness, for there is no separation and no
division. Only loving thoughts are recognized, and because no one is without your
help, the Help of God goes with you everywhere. As you become willing to accept
this Help by asking for it, you will give it because you want it. Nothing will be
beyond your healing power because nothing will be denied your simple request.
What problems will not disappear in the presence of God’s answer? Ask, then, to
learn of the reality of your brother because this is what you will perceive in him,
and you will see your beauty reflected in him.
86
Do not accept your brother’s variable perception of himself, for his split
mind is yours, and you will not accept your healing without his. For you share the
real world as you share Heaven, and his healing is yours.To love yourself is to heal
yourself, and you cannot perceive part of you as sick and achieve your own goal.
Brother, we heal together as we live together and love together. Be not deceived
in God’s Son, for he is one with himself and one with his Father. Love him who
is beloved of His Father, and you will learn of the Father’s love for you.
87
If you perceive offense in a brother, pluck the offense from your mind, for
you are offended by Christ and are deceived in Him. Heal in Christ and be not
offended by Him, for there is no offense in Him. If what you perceive offends
you, you are offended in yourself and are condemning God’s Son, whom God
condemneth not. Let the Holy Spirit remove all offense of God’s Son against
himself and perceive no one but through His guidance, for He would save you
from all condemnation. Accept His healing power and use it for all He sends you,
for He wills to heal the Son of God in whom He is not deceived.
88
Children perceive terrifying ghosts and monsters and dragons, and they are
terrified. Yet if they ask someone they trust for the real meaning of what they
perceive and are willing to let their interpretations go in favor of reality, their fear
goes with them. When a child is helped to translate his “ghost” into a curtain, his
“monster” into a shadow, and his “dragon” into a dream, he is no longer afraid
and laughs happily at his own fear. You, my children, are afraid of your brothers
and of your Father and of yourselves. But you are merely deceived in them.
89
Ask what they are of the Teacher of Reality, and hearing His answer, you too
will laugh at your fears and replace them with peace. For fear lies not in reality,
but in the minds of children who do not understand reality. It is only their lack of
213
understanding which frightens them, and when they learn to perceive truly, they
are not afraid. And because of this, they will ask for truth again when they are
frightened. It is not the reality of your brothers or your Father or yourself which
frightens you.You do not know what they are, and so you perceive them as ghosts
and monsters and dragons. Ask of their reality from the One who knows it, and
He will tell you what they are. For you do not understand them, and because you
are deceived by what you see, you need reality to dispel your fears.
90
Would you not exchange your fears for truth if the exchange is yours for the
asking? For if God is not deceived in you, you can be deceived only in yourself. Yet
you can learn the truth of yourself of the Holy Spirit, who will teach you that,
as part of God, deceit in you is impossible. When you perceive yourself without
deceit, you will accept the real world in place of the false one you have made.
And then your Father will lean down to you and take the last step for you by
raising you unto Himself.
eleven
God’s Plan For Salvation
i.
Introduction
Y
ou have been told not to make error real, and the way to do this is very
simple. If you want to believe in error, you would have to make it real
because it is not true. But truth is real in its own right, and to believe in truth,
you do not have to do anything. Understand that you do not respond to stimuli, but
to stimuli as you interpret them. Your interpretation thus becomes the justification
for the response. That is why analyzing the motives of others is hazardous to you.
If you decide that someone is really trying to attack you or desert you or enslave
you, you will respond as if he had actually done so because you have made his
error real to you. To interpret error is to give it power, and having done this, you
will overlook truth.
11:2
The analysis of ego-motivation is very complicated, very obscuring, and never
without the risk of your own ego-involvement. The whole process represents
a clear cut attempt to demonstrate your own ability to understand what you
perceive.This is shown by the fact that you react to your interpretations as if they
were correct and control your reactions behaviorally but not emotionally. This is
quite evidently a mental split in which you have attacked the integrity of your
mind and pitted one level within it against another.
ii. The Judgment of the
Holy Spirit
There is but one interpretation of all motivation that makes any sense. And
because it is the Holy Spirit’s judgment, it requires no effort at all on your part.
Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help.
That is what it is, regardless of the form it takes. Can anyone be justified in
responding with anger to a plea for help? No response can be appropriate except
the willingness to give it to him, for this and only this is what he is asking for.
Offer him anything else, and you are assuming the right to attack his reality by
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iii. The
Chapter 11: God’s Plan For Salvation
interpreting it as you see fit.
4
Perhaps the danger of this to your own mind is not yet fully apparent to you,
but this by no means signifies that it is not perfectly clear. If you maintain that
an appeal for help is something else, you will react to something else, and your
response will be inappropriate to reality as it is but not to your perception of it.
This is poor reality testing by definition. There is nothing to prevent you from
recognizing all calls for help as exactly what they are except your own perceived
need to attack. It is only this that makes you willing to engage in endless “battles”
with reality in which you deny the reality of the need for healing by making it
unreal. You would not do this except for your unwillingness to perceive reality,
which you withhold from yourself.
5
It is surely good advice to tell you not to judge what you do not understand.
No one with a personal investment is a reliable witness, for truth to him has
become what he wants it to be. If you are unwilling to perceive an appeal for help
as what it is, it is because you are unwilling to give help and to receive it.The analysis
of the ego’s “real” motivation is the modern equivalent of the inquisition, for in
both a brother’s errors are “uncovered” and he is then attacked for his own good.
What can this be but projection? For his errors lay in the minds of his interpreters,
for which they punished him.
6
Whenever you fail to recognize a call for help, you are refusing help. Would
you maintain that you do not need it? Yet this is what you are maintaining when
you refuse to recognize a brother’s appeal, for only by answering his appeal can you
be helped. Deny him your help, and you will not perceive God’s answer to you.
The Holy Spirit does not need your help in interpreting motivation, but you do
need His. Only appreciation is an appropriate response to your brother. Gratitude
is due him for both his loving thoughts and his appeals for help, for both are
capable of bringing love into your awareness if you perceive them truly. And all
your sense of strain comes from your attempts not to do just this.
7
How simple, then, is God’s plan for salvation. There is but one response to
reality, for reality evokes no conflict at all.There is but one Teacher of reality,Who
understands what it is. He does not change His Mind about reality because reality
does not change. Although your interpretations of reality are meaningless in your
divided state, His remain consistently true. He gives them to you because they
are for you. Do not attempt to “help” a brother in your way, for you cannot help
yourselves. But hear his call for the help of God, and you will recognize your own
need for the Father.
8
Your interpretations of your brother’s need is your interpretation of yours.
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Mechanism of Miracles
By giving help you are asking for it, and if you perceive but one need in yourself,
you will be healed. For you will recognize God’s answer as you want it to be,
and if you want it in truth, it will be truly yours. Every appeal you answer in the
name of Christ brings the remembrance of your Father closer to your awareness.
For the sake of your need, then, hear every call for help as what it is, so God can
answer you.
9
By applying the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of the reactions of others more
and more consistently, you will gain an increasing awareness that His criteria are
equally applicable to you. For to recognize fear is not enough to escape from it,
although the recognition is necessary to demonstrate the need for escape. The
Holy Spirit must still translate it into truth. If you were left with the fear, having
recognized it, you would have taken a step away from reality, not towards it.Yet we
have repeatedly emphasized the need to recognize fear and face it without disguise
as a crucial step in the undoing of the ego. Consider how well the Holy Spirit’s
interpretation of the motives of others will serve you then.
10
Having taught you to accept only loving thoughts in others and to regard
everything else as an appeal for help, He has taught you that fear is an appeal
for help. This is what recognizing it really means. If you do not protect it, He will
reinterpret it. That is the ultimate value to you in learning to perceive attack as a
call for love. We have learned surely that fear and attack are inevitably associated.
If only attack produces fear and if you see attack as the call for help that it is, the
unreality of fear must dawn upon you. For fear is a call for love in unconscious
recognition of what has been denied.
iii. The
Mechanism
of
Miracles
Fear is a symptom of your deep sense of loss. If when you perceive it in
others you learn to supply the loss, the basic cause of fear is removed.Thereby you
teach yourself that fear does not exist in you, for you have in yourself the means
for removing it and have demonstrated this by giving it. Fear and love are the only
emotions of which you are capable. One is false, for it was made out of denial,
and denial depends on the real belief in what is denied for its own existence.
12
By interpreting fear correctly as a positive affirmation of the underlying belief
it masks, you are undermining its perceived usefulness by rendering it useless.
Defenses which do not work at all are automatically discarded. If you raise what
fear conceals to clear-cut, unequivocal predominance, fear becomes meaningless.You
have denied its power to conceal love, which was its only purpose. The mask
which you have drawn across the face of love has disappeared.
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If you would look upon love, which is the world’s reality, how could you
do better than to recognize in every defense against it the underlying appeal for
it? And how could you better learn of its reality than by answering the appeal
for it by giving it? The Holy Spirit’s interpretation of fear does dispel it, for the
awareness of truth cannot be denied. Thus does the Holy Spirit replace fear with
love and translate error into truth. And thus will you learn of Him how to replace
your dream of separation with the fact of unity. For the separation is only the
denial of union and, correctly interpreted, attests to your eternal knowledge that
union is true.
14
Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to
heal oneself, those who are sick do not love themselves. Therefore, they are asking
for the love that would heal them but which they are denying to themselves.
If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of
the miracle-worker thus becomes to deny the denial of truth. The sick must heal
themselves, for the truth is in them.Yet, having obscured it, the light in another mind
must shine into theirs because that light is theirs.
15
The light in them shines as brightly, regardless of the density of the fog that
obscures it. If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it has none, for
it has power only because the Son of God gave power to it. He must himself
withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. You can remember this
for all the Sonship. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness
is yours. But your remembering is his, for God cannot be remembered alone. This
is what you have forgotten. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing
of yourself is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers with
Him, and God’s answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember.
16
Perceive in sickness but another call for love and offer your brother what he
believes he cannot offer himself. Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy.
You will be made whole as you make whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal
for health is to recognize in hatred the call for love. And to give a brother what
he really wants is to offer it unto yourself, for your Father wills you to know your
brother as yourself. Answer his call for love and yours is answered. Healing is the
love of Christ for His Father and for Himself.
17
Remember what we said about the frightening perceptions of little children
which terrify them because they do not understand them. If they ask for
enlightenment and accept it, their fears vanish, but if they hide their nightmares,
they will keep them. It is easy to help an uncertain child, for he recognizes that
he does not know what his perceptions mean.Yet you believe that you do know.
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iii. The
Mechanism of Miracles
Little children, you are hiding your heads under the covers of the heavy blankets
you have laid upon yourselves.You are hiding your nightmares in the darkness of
your own certainty and refusing to open your eyes and look at them.
18
Let us not save nightmares, for they are not fitting offerings for Christ, and
so they are not fit gifts for you.Take off the covers and look at what you are afraid
of. Only the anticipation will frighten you, for the reality of nothingness cannot
be frightening. Let us not delay this, for your dream of hatred will not leave you
without help, and help is here. Learn to be quiet in the midst of turmoil, for
quietness is the end of strife and this is the journey to peace. Look straight at
every image that rises to delay you, for the goal is inevitable because it is eternal.
The goal of love is but your right, and it belongs to you despite your preference.
19
You still want what God wills, and no nightmare can defeat a Child of God in
his purpose. For your purpose was given you by God, and you must accomplish
it because it is His Will. Awake and remember your purpose, for it is your will to
do so.What has been accomplished for you must be yours. Do not let your hatred
stand in the way of love, for nothing can withstand the love of Christ for His
Father or His Father’s love for Him.
20
A little while and you will see me, for I am not hidden because you are hiding.
I will awaken you as surely as I awakened myself, for I awoke for you. In my
resurrection is your release. Our mission is to escape crucifixion, not redemption.
Trust in my help, for I did not walk alone, and I will walk with you as our Father
walked with me. Did you not know that I walked with Him in peace? And does
not that mean that peace goes with us on the journey?
21
There is no fear in perfect love. We will but be making perfect to you what
is already perfect in you.You do not fear the unknown, but the known. You will not
fail in your mission because I failed not in mine. Give me but a little trust in the
name of the complete trust I have in you, and we will easily accomplish the goal of
perfection together. For perfection is and cannot be denied.To deny the denial of
perfection is not so difficult as the denial of truth, and what we can accomplish
together must be believed when you see it as accomplished.
22
You who have tried to banish love have not succeeded, but you who choose
to banish fear will succeed. The Lord is with you, but you know it not.Yet your
Redeemer liveth and abideth in you in the peace out of which He was created.
Would you not exchange this awareness for the awareness of your fear? When we
have overcome fear—not by hiding it, not by minimizing it, not by denying its
full import in any way—this is what you will really see.You cannot lay aside the
obstacle to real vision without looking upon it, for to lay aside means to judge
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iv. The Investment in
against. If you will look, the Holy Spirit will judge and will judge truly. He cannot
shine away what you keep hidden, for you have not offered it to Him, and He
cannot take it from you.
23
We are therefore embarking on an organized, well-structured, and carefully
planned program aimed at learning how to offer to the Holy Spirit everything
you do not want. He knows what to do with it.You do not know how to use what
He knows. Whatever is revealed to Him that is not of God is gone.Yet you must
reveal it to yourself in perfect willingness, for otherwise His knowledge remains
useless to you. Surely He will not fail to help you, since help is His only purpose.
Do you not have greater reason for fearing the world as you perceive it than for
looking at the cause of fear and letting it go forever?
iv. The Investment in
Reality
I once asked if you were willing to sell all you have and give to the poor and
follow me. This is what I meant: If you had no investment in anything in this
world, you could teach the poor where their treasure is. The poor are merely those
who have invested wrongly, and they are poor indeed! Because they are in need,
it is given you to help them since you are among them. Consider how perfectly
your lesson would be learned if you were unwilling to share their poverty. For
poverty is lack, and there is but one lack since there is but one need.
25
Suppose a brother insists on having you do something you think you do
not want to do. The very fact of his insistence should tell you that he believes
salvation lies in it. If you insist on refusing and experience a quick response of
opposition, you are believing that your salvation lies in not doing it.You, then, are
making the same mistake that he is and are making his error real to both of you.
Insistence means investment, and what you invest in is always related to your
notion of salvation. The question is always two-fold—first, what is to be saved,
and second, how can it be saved?
26
Whenever you become angry with a brother, for whatever reason, you are
believing that the ego is to be saved and to be saved by attack. If he attacks, you are
agreeing with this belief, and if you attack, you are reinforcing it. Remember that
those who attack are poor.Their poverty asks for gifts, not for further impoverishment.
You who could help them are surely acting destructively if you accept their
poverty as yours. If you had not invested as they had, it would never occur to you
to overlook their need.
27
Recognize what does not matter, and if your brothers ask you for something
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Reality
“outrageous,” do it because it does not matter. Refuse and your opposition
establishes that it does matter to you. It is only you, therefore, who have made
the request outrageous, for nothing can be asked of you, and every request of a
brother is for you. Why would you insist in denying him? For to do so is to deny
yourself and impoverish both. He is asking for salvation, as you are. Poverty is of
the ego and never of God. No “outrageous” request can be made of one who
recognizes what is valuable and wants to accept nothing else.
28
Salvation is for the mind, and it is attained through peace. This is the only
thing that can be saved and the only way to save it. Any response other than love
arises from a confusion about the “what” and the “how” of salvation, and this
is the only answer. Never lose sight of this, and never allow yourself to believe
even for an instant that there is another answer. For you will surely place yourself
among the poor, who do not understand that they dwell in abundance and that
salvation is come.
29
To identify with the ego is to attack yourself and make yourself poor. That
is why everyone who identifies with the ego feels deprived. What he experiences
then is depression or anger, but what he did is to exchange his self-love for selfhate, making him afraid of himself. He does not realize this. Even if he is fully
aware of anxiety, he does not perceive its source as his own ego identification, and
he always tries to handle it by making some sort of insane “arrangement” with
the world. He always perceives this world as outside himself, for this is crucial to
his adjustment. He does not realize that he makes this world, for there is no world
outside of him.
30
If only the loving thoughts of God’s Son are the world’s reality, the real world
must be in his mind. His insane thoughts, too, must be in his mind, but an internal
conflict of this magnitude he cannot tolerate. A split mind is endangered, and
the recognition that it encompasses completely opposed thoughts within itself
is intolerable. Therefore the mind projects the split, not the reality. Everything
you perceive as the outside world is merely your attempt to maintain your ego
identification, for everyone believes that identification is salvation. Yet consider
what has happened, for thoughts do have consequences to the thinker.
31
You are at odds with the world as you perceive it because you think it is
antagonistic to you. This is a necessary consequence of what you have done.You
have projected outward what is antagonistic to what is inward, and therefore you
would have to perceive it this way. That is why you must realize that your hatred
is in your mind and not outside it before you can get rid of it and why you must
get rid of it before you can perceive the world as it really is.
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v. Seeking and
We once said that God so loved the world that He gave it to His only-begotten
Son. God does love the real world, and those who perceive its reality cannot see
the world of death. For death is not of the real world, in which everything is
eternal. God gave you the real world in exchange for the one you made out of
your split mind, and which is the symbol of death. For if you could really separate
yourselves from the Mind of God, you would die, and the world you perceive is
a world of separation.
33
You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father.Yet He would not
have it so, and so it is not so.You still could not will against Him, and that is why
you have no control over the world you made. It is not a world of will because it
is governed by the desire to be unlike Him, and this desire is not will. The world
you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless “laws,”
and without meaning of any kind. For it was made out of what you do not want,
projected from your mind because you were afraid of it.
34
Yet this world is only in the mind of its maker along with his real salvation.
Do not believe it is outside of yourself, for only by recognizing where it is will you
gain control over it. For you do have control over your mind since the mind is the
mechanism of decision. If you will recognize that all attack which you perceive
is in your own mind and nowhere else, you will at last have placed its source, and
where it began it must end. For in this same place also lies salvation. The altar of
God where Christ abideth is there.
35
You have defiled the altar but not the world. Yet Christ has placed the
Atonement on the altar for you. Bring your perceptions of the world to this altar,
for it is the altar to truth. There you will see your vision changed, and there you
will learn to see truly. From this place, where God and His Son dwell in peace
and where you are welcome, you will look out in peace and behold the world
truly. Yet to find the place, you must relinquish your investment in the world as
you have projected it, allowing the Holy Spirit to project the real world to you
from the altar of God.
32
v.
Seeking
and
Finding
The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is always its central
teaching. It never puts it this way; on the contrary, everyone who believes that the
ego is salvation is intensely engaged in the search for love. Yet the ego, though
encouraging the search very actively, makes one proviso—do not find it. Its
dictates, then, can be summed up simply as, “Seek and do not find.” This is the
one promise the ego holds out to you and the one promise it will keep. For the
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Finding
ego pursues its goal with fanatic insistence, and its reality testing, though severely
impaired, is completely consistent.
37
The search which the ego undertakes is therefore bound to be defeated.
And since it also teaches that it is your identification, its guidance leads you to
a journey which must end in perceived self-defeat. For the ego cannot love, and
in its frantic search for love, it is seeking what it is afraid to find. The search is
inevitable because the ego is part of your mind, and because of its source, the ego
is not wholly split off, or it could not be believed at all. For it is your mind that
believes in it and gives existence to it.Yet it is also your mind that has the power
to deny the ego’s existence, and you will surely do so when you realize exactly
what the journey is on which the ego sets you.
38
It is surely obvious that no one wants to find what would utterly defeat him.
Being unable to love, the ego would be totally inadequate in love’s presence, for
it could not respond at all. You would have to abandon the ego’s guidance, for
it would be quite apparent that it had not taught you the response pattern you
need. The ego will therefore distort love and teach you that love calls forth the
responses which the ego can teach. Follow its teaching, then, and you will search
for love but will not recognize it.
39
Do you realize that the ego must set you on a journey which cannot but lead
to a sense of futility and depression? To seek and not to find is hardly joyous. Is this
the promise you would keep? The Holy Spirit offers you another promise, and
one that will lead to joy. For His promise is always, “Seek and you will find,” and
under His guidance you cannot be defeated. His is the journey to accomplishment,
and the goal He sets before you He will give you. For He will never deceive God’s
Son, whom He loves with the love of the Father.
40
You will undertake a journey because you are not at home in this world.
And you will search for your home whether you know where it is or not. If you
believe it is outside yourself, the search will be futile, for you will be seeking it
where it is not. You do not know how to look within yourself, for you do not
believe your home is there.Yet the Holy Spirit knows it for you, and He will guide
you to your home because that is His mission. As He fulfills His mission, He will
teach you yours, for your mission is the same as His. By guiding your brothers
home, you are but following Him.
41
Behold the Guide your Father gave you that you might learn you have
eternal life. For death is not your Father’s Will nor yours, and whatever is true is
the Will of the Father.You pay no price for life, for that was given you, but you
do pay a price for death, and a very heavy one. If death is your treasure, you will
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sell everything else to purchase it. And you will believe that you have purchased it
because you have sold everything else.Yet you cannot sell the Kingdom of Heaven.
Your inheritance can neither be bought nor sold. There can be no disinherited
parts of the Sonship, for God is whole, and all His extensions are like Him.
42
The Atonement was not the price of our wholeness, but it was the price of
your awareness of your wholeness. For what you chose to “sell” had to be kept for
you since you could not “buy” it back.Yet you must invest in it, not with money
but with your spirit. For Spirit is will, and will is the “price” of the Kingdom.Your
inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have been redeemed. The Holy
Spirit guides you into life eternal, but you must relinquish your investment in
death, or you will not see life though it is all around you.
vi. The
Sane Curriculum
Only love is strong because it is undivided. The strong do not attack because
they see no need to do so. Before the idea of attack can enter your mind, you
must have perceived yourself as weak. Because you had attacked yourself and
believed that the attack was effective, you behold yourself as weakened. No longer
perceiving yourself and all your brothers as equal and regarding yourself as weaker,
you attempt to “equalize” the situation you have made. You use attack to do so
because you believe that attack was successful in weakening you.
44
That is why the recognition of your own invulnerability is so important
in the restoration of your sanity. For if you accept your invulnerability, you are
recognizing that attack has no effect. Although you have attacked yourself, and
very brutally, you will demonstrate that nothing happened. Therefore, by attacking
you have not done anything. Once you realize this, there is no longer any sense in
attack, for it manifestly does not work and cannot protect you.Yet the recognition of
your invulnerability has more than negative value. If your attacks on yourself have
failed to weaken you, you are still strong.You therefore have no need to “equalize”
the situation to establish your strength.
45
You will never realize the utter uselessness of attack except by recognizing that
your attack on yourself had no effects. For others do react to attack if they perceive
it, and if you are trying to attack them, you will be unable to avoid interpreting
this as reinforcement. The only place where you can cancel out all reinforcement
is in yourself. For you are always the first point of your attack, and if this has never
been, it has no consequences.
46
The Holy Spirit’s love is your strength, for yours is divided and therefore not
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vi. The
Sane Curriculum
real. You could not trust your own love when you have attacked it. You cannot
learn of perfect love with a split mind because a split mind had made itself a poor
learner. You tried to make the separation eternal because you wanted to retain
the characteristics of creation with your own content. Yet creation is not of you,
and poor learners need special teaching. You have learning handicaps in a very
literal sense.
47
There are areas in your learning skills which are so impaired that you can
progress only under constant, clear-cut direction provided by a Teacher Who
can transcend your limited resources. He becomes your resource because of
yourself you cannot learn. The learning situation in which you placed yourself is
impossible, and in this situation you clearly require a special Teacher and a special
curriculum. Poor learners are not good choices for teachers, either for themselves
or for anyone else.You would hardly turn to them to establish the curriculum by
which they can escape from their limitations. If they understood what is beyond
them, they would not be handicapped.
48
You do not know the meaning of love, and that is your handicap. Do not
attempt to teach yourselves what you do not understand, and do not try to set
up curriculum goals where yours have clearly failed. Your learning goal has been
not to learn, and this cannot lead to successful learning.You cannot transfer what
you have not learned, and the impairment of the ability to generalize is a crucial
learning failure. Would you ask those who have failed to learn what learning aids
are for? They do not know. For if they could interpret the aids correctly, they would
have learned from them.
49
We have said that the ego’s rule is, “Seek and do not find.” Translated into
curricular terms, this is the same as saying, “Try to learn but do not succeed.” The
result of this curriculum goal is obvious. Every legitimate teaching aid, every real
instruction, and every sensible guide to learning will be misinterpreted. For they are
all for learning facilitation, which this strange curriculum goal is against. If you
are trying to learn how not to learn and are using the aim of teaching to defeat
itself, what can you expect but confusion? The curriculum does not make sense.
50
This kind of “learning” has so weakened your mind that you cannot love, for
the curriculum you have chosen is against love and amounts to a course in how
to attack yourself. A necessary minor, supplementing this major curriculum goal,
is learning how not to overcome the split which made this goal believable. And
you cannot overcome it, for all your learning is on its behalf. Yet your will speaks
against your learning, as your learning speaks against your will, and so you fight
against learning and succeed, for that is your will. But you do not realize even yet
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vii. The Vision of
that there is something you do will to learn, and that you can learn it because it
is your will to do so.
51
You who have tried to learn what you do not will should take heart, for
although the curriculum you set yourself is depressing indeed, it is merely
ridiculous if you look at it. Is it possible that the way to achieve a goal is not
to attain it? Resign now as your own teachers. This resignation will not lead to
depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught
yourselves and of the learning outcomes which have resulted. Under the proper
learning conditions, which you can neither provide nor understand, you will
become excellent learners and teachers. But it is not so yet and will not be so until
the whole learning situation as you have set it up is reversed.
52
Your learning potential, properly understood, is limitless because it will lead
you to God.You can teach the way to Him and learn it if you follow the Teacher
Who knows it and His curriculum for learning it. The curriculum is totally
unambiguous because the goal is not divided, and the means and the end are in
complete accord. You need offer only undivided attention. Everything else will be
given you. For it is your will to learn aright, and nothing can oppose the will of
God’s Son. His learning is as unlimited as he is.
vii. The Vision of
Christ
The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world and lose your
own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you cannot lose your Soul and there is no
gain in the world, for of itself it profits nothing. To invest in something without
profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there
no profit in the investment, but the cost to you is enormous. For this investment
costs you the world’s reality by denying yours and gives you nothing in return.
You cannot sell your Soul, but you can sell your awareness of it.You cannot perceive
your Soul, but you will not know it while you perceive anything else as more
valuable.
54
The Holy Spirit is your strength because He perceives nothing but your Soul
as you. He is perfectly aware that you do not know yourselves and perfectly aware
of how to teach you what you are. Because He loves you, He will gladly teach you
what He loves, for He wills to share it. Remembering you always, He cannot let
you forget your worth. For the Father never ceases to remind Him of His Son,
and He never ceases to remind His Son of the Father. God is in your memory
because of Him.You chose to forget your Father, but you did not will to do so, and
therefore you can decide otherwise. As it was my decision, so is it yours.
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Christ
You do not want the world. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of
it you look upon with love.This gives it the only reality it will ever have. Its value
is not in itself, but yours is in you. As self-value comes from self-extension, so does
the perception of self-value come from the projection of loving thoughts outward.
Make the world real unto yourself, for the real world is the gift of the Holy Spirit,
and so it belongs to you.
56
Correction is for all who cannot see. To open the eyes of the blind is the
Holy Spirit’s mission, for He knows that they have not lost their vision but merely
sleep. He would awaken them from the sleep of forgetting to the remembering of
God. Christ’s eyes are open, and He will look upon whatever you see with love
if you accept His vision as yours.
57
The Holy Spirit keeps the vision of Christ for every Son of God who sleeps.
In His sight the Son of God is perfect, and He longs to share His vision with you.
He will show you the real world because God gave you Heaven. Through Him
your Father calls His Son to remember. The awakening of His Son begins with
his investment in the real world, and by this he will learn to reinvest in himself.
For reality is one with the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit blesses the real
world in their name.
58
When you have seen this real world, as you will surely do, you will remember
us.Yet you must learn the cost of sleeping and refuse to pay it. Only then will you
decide to awaken. And then the real world will spring to your sight, for Christ has
never slept. He is waiting to be seen, for He has never lost sight of you. He looks
quietly on the real world, which He would share with you because He knows of
the Father’s love for Him. And knowing this, He would give you what is yours. In
perfect peace He waits for you at His Father’s altar, holding out the Father’s love
to you in the quiet light of the Holy Spirit’s blessing. For the Holy Spirit will lead
everyone home to his Father, where Christ waits as his Self.
59
Every Child of God is one in Christ, for his Being is in Christ as Christ’s is
in God. Christ’s love for you is His love for His Father, which He knows because
He knows His Father’s love for Him. When the Holy Spirit has at last led you
to Christ at the altar to His Father, perception fuses into knowledge because
perception has become so holy that its transfer to holiness is merely its natural
extension. Love transfers to love without any interference, for the situations are
identical. As you perceive more and more common elements in all situations, the
transfer of your training under the Holy Spirit’s guidance increases and becomes
generalized. Gradually you learn to apply it to everyone and everything, for
its applicability is universal. When this has been accomplished, perception and
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viii. The
knowledge have become so similar that they share the unification of the laws of
God.
60
What is one cannot be perceived as separate, and the denial of the separation
is the reinstatement of knowledge. At the altar of God, the holy perception of
God’s Son becomes so enlightened that light streams into it, and the Spirit of
God’s Son shines in the Mind of the Father and becomes one with it.Very gently
does God shine upon Himself, loving the extension of Himself which is His
Son. The world has no purpose as it blends into the purpose of God. For the real
world has slipped quietly into Heaven, where everything eternal in it has always
been. There the Redeemer and the redeemed join in perfect love of God and of
each other. Heaven is your home, and being in God, it must also be in you.
viii. The
Guide For Miracles
Miracles demonstrate that learning has occurred under the right guidance,
for learning is invisible, and what has been learned can be recognized only by
its results. Its generalization is demonstrated as you use it in more and more
situations.You will recognize that you have learned there is no order of difficulty
in miracles when you have applied them to all situations. There is no situation
to which miracles do not apply, and by applying them to all situations, you will
gain the real world. For in this holy perception, you will be made whole, and the
Atonement will radiate from your acceptance of it for yourself to everyone the
Holy Spirit sends you for your blessing. In every Child of God His blessing lies,
and in your blessing of the Children of God is His blessing to you.
62
Everyone in the world must play his part in the redemption of the world
to recognize that the world has been redeemed. You cannot see the invisible. Yet
if you see its effects, you know it must be there. By perceiving what it does, you
recognize its being. And by what it does, you learn what it is.You cannot see your
abilities, but you gain confidence in their existence as they enable you to act. And
the results of your actions you can see.
63
The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you can see the results of His Presence, and
through them you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is
clearly not of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality as this world
judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction
and control is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly
beyond all of them. Perceiving His results, you will understand where He must be
and finally know what He is.
61
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Guide For Miracles
You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And
unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses and
speak for His Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through
the witnesses who speak for it. For you can be aware of what you cannot see, and
it can become compellingly real to you as its presence becomes manifest through
you. Do the Holy Spirit’s work, for you share in His function. As your function in
Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function
with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth.
65
As long as you believe you have two functions, so long will you need
correction. For this belief is the destruction of peace, a goal in direct opposition
to the Holy Spirit’s purpose. You see what you expect, and you expect what you
invite. Your perception is the result of your invitation, coming to you as you sent
for it. Whose manifestations would you see? Of whose presence would you be
convinced? For you will believe in what you manifest, and as you look out, so
will you see in. Two ways of looking at the world are in your mind, and your
perception will reflect the guidance you chose.
66
I am the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and when you see me, it will be
because you have invited Him. For He will send you His witnesses if you will but
look upon them. Remember always that you see what you seek, for what you
seek you will find. The ego finds what it seeks and only that. It does not find love,
for that is not what it is seeking.Yet seeking and finding are the same, and if you
seek for two goals you will find them, but you will recognize neither. For you will
think they are the same because you want them both.The mind always strives for
integration, and if it is split and wants to keep the split, it will believe it has one
goal by making it one.
67
We said before that what you project is up to you, but it is not up to you
whether to project, for projection is a law of mind. Perception is projection, and
you look in before you look out. As you look in you choose the guide for seeing,
and then you look out and behold his witnesses. This is why you find what you
seek. What you want in yourself, you will make manifest by projection, and you
will accept it from the world because you put it there by wanting it.
68
When you think you are projecting what you do not want, it is still because
you do want it. This leads directly to dissociation, for it represents the acceptance
of two goals, each perceived in a different place, separated from each other because
you made them different. The mind then sees a divided world outside itself but
not within. This gives it an illusion of integrity and enables it to believe that it is
pursuing one goal. As long as you perceive the world as split, you are not healed.
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ix. Reality and
For to be healed is to pursue one goal because you have accepted only one and
want but one.
69
When you want only love you will see nothing else. The contradictory
nature of the witnesses you perceive is merely the reflection of your conflicting
invitations. You have looked upon your minds and accepted opposition there,
having sought it there. But do not then believe that the witnesses for opposition
are true, for they attest only to your decision about reality, returning to you the
message you gave them. Love is recognized by its messengers. If you make love
manifest, its messengers will come to you because you invited them.
70
The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this
world. You can decide to see it right. What you made of it is not its reality, for its
reality is only what you gave it.You cannot really give anything but love to anyone
or anything, nor can you really receive anything else from them. If you think you
have received anything else, it is because you have looked within and thought
you saw the power to give something else within yourself. It was only this decision
that determined what you found, for it was the decision of what you sought.
71
You are afraid of me because you looked within and are afraid of what you
saw.Yet you could not have seen reality, for the reality of your mind is the loveliest
of God’s creations. Coming only from God, its power and grandeur could only
bring you peace if you really looked upon it. If you are afraid, it is because you saw
something that is not there. Yet in that same place, you could have looked upon
me and all your brothers in the perfect safety of the Mind which created us. For
we are there in the peace of the Father, Who wills to project His peace through
you.
72
When you have accepted your mission to project peace, you will find it, for
by making it manifest, you will see it. Its holy witnesses will surround you because
you called upon them and they will come to you. I have heard your call and I
have answered it, but you will not look upon me nor hear the answer which you
sought. That is because you do not yet want only that.Yet as I become more real
to you, you will learn that you do want only that. And you will see me as you look
within, and we will look upon the world as God created it together.Through the
eyes of Christ, only the real world exists and can be seen. As you decide, so will
you see. And all that you see but witnesses to your decision.
73
When you look within and see me, it will be because you have decided to
manifest truth. And as you manifest it, you will see it both without and within,
for you will see it without because you saw it first within. Everything you behold
without is a judgment of what you beheld within. If it is your judgment, it will
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Redemption
be wrong, for judgment is not your function. If it is the judgment of the Holy
Spirit, it will be right, for judgment is His function.You share His function only
by judging as He does, reserving no judgment at all unto yourselves. For you will
judge against yourselves, but He will judge for you.
74
Remember, then, that whenever you look without and react unfavorably to
what you see, you have judged yourself unworthy and have condemned yourself
to death.The death penalty is the ego’s ultimate goal, for it fully believes that you
are a criminal, as deserving of death as God knows you are deserving of life. The
death penalty never leaves the ego’s mind, for that is what it always reserves for
you in the end. Wanting to kill you as the final expression of its feeling for you, it
lets you live but to await death. It will torment you while you live, but its hatred
is not satisfied until you die. For your destruction is the one end toward which it
works, and the only end with which it will be satisfied.
75
The ego is not a traitor to God to Whom treachery is impossible, but it is a
traitor to you who believe you have been treacherous to your Father. That is why
the undoing of guilt is an essential part of the Holy Spirit’s teaching. For as long
as you feel guilty, you are listening to the voice of the ego, which tells you that
you have been treacherous to God and therefore deserve death.You will think that
death comes from God and not from the ego because, by confusing yourself with
the ego, you believe that you want death. And from what you want, God does not
save you.
76
When you are tempted to yield to the desire for death, remember that I did not
die. You will realize that this is true when you look within and see me. Would I
have overcome death for myself alone? And would eternal life have been given
me of the Father unless He had also given it to you? When you learn to make me
manifest, you will never see death. For you will have looked upon the deathless
in yourself, and you will see only the eternal as you look out upon a world that
cannot die.
ix.
Reality
and
Redemption
Do you really believe that you can kill the Son of God? The Father has hidden
His Son safely within Himself and kept him far away from your destructive
thoughts, but you know neither the Father nor the Son because of them. You
attack the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are
surprised that you cannot see it. If you seek love in order to attack, it you will
never find it. For if love is sharing, how can you find it except through itself? Offer
it and it will come to you because it is drawn to itself. But offer attack and it will
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x. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability
remain hidden, for it can live only in peace.
78
God’s Son is as safe as his Father, for the Son knows his Father’s protection
and cannot fear. His Father’s love holds him in perfect peace, and needing nothing,
he asks for nothing.Yet he is far from you whose Self he is, for you chose to attack
him, and he disappeared from your sight into his Father. He did not change, but
you did. For a split mind and all its works were not created by the Father and
could not live in the knowledge of Him.
79
When you made what is not true visible, what is true became invisible. Yet
it cannot be invisible in itself, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity. It is
invisible to you because you are looking at something else.Yet it is no more up to
you to decide what is visible and what is invisible than it is up to you to decide
what reality is. What can be seen is what the Holy Spirit sees. The definition of
reality is God’s, not yours. He created it, and He knows what it is.You who knew
have forgotten, and unless He had given you a way to remember, you would have
condemned yourselves to oblivion.
80
Because of your Father’s love you can never forget Him, for no one can
forget what God Himself placed in his memory.You can deny it, but you cannot
lose it. A Voice will answer every question you ask, and a Vision will correct the
perception of everything you see. For what you have made invisible is the only
truth, and what you have not heard is the only answer. God would reunite you
with yourself and did not abandon you in your seeming distress.You are waiting
only for Him and do not know it. Yet His memory shines in your minds and
cannot be obliterated. It is no more past than future, being forever always.
81
You have but to ask for this memory, and you will remember.Yet the memory
of God cannot shine in a mind which has made it invisible and wants to keep it
so. For the memory of God can dawn only in a mind that wills to remember
and that has relinquished the insane desire to control reality. You who cannot
even control yourselves should hardly aspire to control the universe. But look
upon what you have made of it and rejoice that it is not so. Son of God, be not
content with nothing! What is not real cannot be seen and has no value. God
could not offer His Son what has no value, nor could His Son receive it.You were
redeemed the instant you thought you had deserted Him.
82
Everything you made has never been and is invisible because the Holy
Spirit does not see it. Yet what He does see is yours to behold, and through His
vision your perception is healed.You have made the invisible the only truth that
this world holds. Valuing nothing, you have sought nothing and found nothing.
By making nothing real to you, you have seen it. But it is not there. And Christ
232
is invisible to you because of what you have made visible to yourselves. Yet it
does not matter how much distance you have tried to interpose between your
awareness and truth. God’s Son can be seen because his vision is shared.The Holy
Spirit looks upon him and sees nothing else in you. What is invisible to you is
perfect in His sight and encompasses all of it. He has remembered you because
He forgot not the Father.
83
You looked upon the unreal and found despair. Yet by seeking the unreal,
what else could you find? The unreal world is a thing of despair, for it can never
be. And you who share God’s Being with Him could never be content without
reality. What God did not give you has no power over you, and the attraction of
love for love remains irresistible. For it is the function of love to unite all things
unto itself, and to hold all things together by extending its wholeness.
84
The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you
made and which you see. But take it from the hand of Christ and look upon it.
Its reality will make everything else invisible, for beholding it is total perception.
And as you look upon it, you will remember that it was always so. Nothingness
will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly. Redeemed perception
is easily translated into knowledge, for only perception is capable of error, and
perception has never been. Being corrected, it gives place to knowledge, which
is forever the only reality. The Atonement is but the way back to what was never
lost.Your Father could not cease to love His Son.
x.
Guiltlessness
and Invulnerability
If you did not feel guilty, you could not attack, for condemnation is the root of
attack. It is the judgment of one mind by another as unworthy of love and deserving
of punishment. But herein lies the split. For the mind that judges perceives itself
as separate from the mind being judged, believing that by punishing another, it
will escape punishment. All this is but the delusional attempt of the mind to deny
itself and escape the penalty of denial. It is not an attempt to relinquish denial but to
hold on to it. For it is guilt that has obscured the Father to you, and it is guilt that
has driven you insane.
86
The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God’s Son was the beginning of the
separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end.The world you see is the
delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and
you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all
the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it
through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn
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233
of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and
its powers decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert and
are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief
of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground and seem to
be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel.
87
If this were the real world, God would be cruel. For no father could subject
his children to this as the price of salvation and be loving. Love does not kill to save.
If it did, attack would be salvation, and this is the ego’s interpretation, not God’s.
Only the world of guilt could demand this, for only the guilty could conceive of it.
Adam’s “sin” could have touched none of you, had you not believed that it was
the Father Who drove him out of paradise. For in that belief, the knowledge of the
Father was lost, since only those who do not understand Him could believe it.
88
This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God’s Son. And until you realize
that God’s Son cannot be crucified, this is the world you will see.Yet you will not
realize this until you accept the eternal fact that God’s Son is not guilty. He deserves
only love because he has given only love. He cannot be condemned because he has
never condemned.The Atonement is the final lesson he need learn, for it teaches
him that, never having sinned, he has no need of salvation.
89
Long ago we said that the Holy Spirit shares the goal of all good teachers,
whose ultimate aim is to make themselves unnecessary by teaching their pupils
all they know.The Holy Spirit wills only this, for sharing the Father’s love for His
Son, He wills to remove all guilt from his mind that he may remember his Father
in peace. For peace and guilt are antithetical, and the Father can be remembered
only in peace. Love and guilt cannot coexist, and to accept one is to deny the
other. Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness
of God’s Son.
90
In this strange world which you have made, the Son of God has sinned.
How could you see him, then? By making him invisible, the world of retribution
rose in the black cloud of guilt which you accepted, and you hold it dear. For
the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was and can never be.
Without guilt the ego has no life, and God’s Son is without guilt. As you look
upon yourselves and judge what you do honestly, as you have been asked to do,
you may be tempted to wonder how you can be guiltless.
91
Yet consider this: You are not guiltless in time, but in eternity.You have “sinned”
in the past, but there is no past. Always has no direction. Time seems to go in one
direction, but when you reach its end, it will roll up like a long carpet which has
spread along the past behind you and will disappear. As long as you believe the
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x. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability
Son of God is guilty, you will walk along this carpet, believing that it leads to
death. And the journey will seem long and cruel and senseless, for so it is.
92
The journey which the Son of God has set himself is foolish indeed, but the
journey on which his Father sets him is one of release and joy. The Father is not
cruel, and His Son cannot hurt himself. The retaliation he fears and which he sees
will never touch him, for although he believes in it, the Holy Spirit knows it is not
true. The Holy Spirit stands at the end of time, where you must be because He is
with you. He has always undone everything unworthy of the Son of God, for such
was His mission, given Him by God. And what God gives has always been.
93
You will see me as you learn the Son of God is guiltless. He has always sought
his guiltlessness, and he has found it. For everyone is seeking to escape from the
prison he has made, and the way to find release is not denied him. Being in
him, he has found it. When he finds it is only a matter of time, and time is but
an illusion. For the Son of God is guiltless now, and the brightness of his purity
shines untouched forever in God’s Mind. God’s Son will always be as he was
created. Deny your world and judge him not, for his eternal guiltlessness is in the
Mind of his Father, and protects him forever.
94
When you have accepted the Atonement for yourselves, you will realize that
there is no guilt in God’s Son. And only as you look upon him as guiltless can you
understand his oneness. For the idea of guilt brings a belief in condemnation of
one by another, projecting separation in place of unity. You can condemn only
yourself, and by so doing, you cannot know that you are God’s Son. You have
denied the condition of his Being, which is his perfect blamelessness. Out of love
he was created, and in love he abides. Goodness and mercy have always followed
him, for he has always extended the love of his Father.
95
As you perceive the holy companions who travel with you, you will realize
that there is no journey, but only an awakening. The Son of God, who sleepeth
not, has kept faith with his Father for you. There is no road to travel on and no
time to travel through. For God waits not for His Son in time, being forever
unwilling to be without him. And so it has always been. Let the holiness of God’s
Son shine away the cloud of guilt that darkens your mind, and by accepting his
purity as yours, learn of him that it is yours.
96
You are invulnerable because you are guiltless.You can hold on to the past only
through guilt. For guilt establishes that you will be punished for what you have
done and thus depends on one-dimensional time, proceeding from past to future.
No one who believes this can understand what always means. And therefore guilt
must deprive you of the appreciation of eternity.You are immortal because you are
235
eternal and always must be now. Guilt, then, is a way of holding past and future in
your minds to ensure the ego’s continuity. For if what has been will be punished,
the ego’s continuity is guaranteed.Yet the guarantee of your continuity is God’s,
not the ego’s. And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while
immortality is constant.
97
Accepting the Atonement teaches you what immortality is, for by accepting
your guiltlessness, you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is
needless. The future, in time, is always associated with expiation, and only guilt
could induce a sense of need for expiation. Accepting the guiltlessness of the Son
of God as yours is therefore God’s way of reminding you of His Son and what
he is in truth. For God has never condemned His Son, and being guiltless, he is
eternal.
98
You cannot dispel guilt by making it real and then atoning for it. This is the
ego’s plan, which it offers instead of dispelling it. The ego believes in atonement
through attack, being fully committed to the insane notion that attack is salvation.
And you who cherish guilt must also believe it, for how else but by identifying
with the ego could you hold dear what you do not want?
99
The ego teaches you to attack yourself because you are guilty, and this must
increase the guilt, for guilt is the result of attack. In the ego’s teaching, then, there
is no escape from guilt. For attack makes guilt real, and if it is real, there is no way
to overcome it. The Holy Spirit dispels it simply through the calm recognition
that it has never been. As He looks upon the guiltless Son of God, he knows this is
true. And being true for you, you cannot attack yourself, for without guilt, attack
is impossible.You, then, are saved because God’s Son is guiltless. And being wholly
pure, you are invulnerable.
twelve
The Problem of Guilt
i.
Introduction
T
he ultimate purpose of projection, as the ego uses it, is always to get rid
of guilt.Yet, characteristically, the ego attempts to get rid of guilt from its
viewpoint only, for much as the ego wants to retain guilt, you find it intolerable,
since guilt stands in the way of your remembering God, Whose pull is so strong
that you cannot resist it. On this issue, then, the deepest spilt of all occurs, for if
you are to retain guilt, as the ego insists, you cannot be you. Only by persuading
you that it is you could the ego possibly induce you to project guilt and thereby
keep it in your mind.
12:2
Yet consider how strange a solution the ego’s arrangement is. You project
guilt to get rid of it, but you are actually merely concealing it.You do experience
guilt feelings, but you have no idea why. On the contrary, you associate them
with a weird assortment of ego ideals which the ego claims you have failed. Yet
you have no idea that you are failing the Son of God by seeing him as guilty.
Believing you are no longer you, you do not realize that you are failing yourself.
ii.
Crucifixion By Guilt
The darkest of your hidden cornerstones holds your belief in guilt from
your awareness. For in that dark and secret place is the realization that you have
betrayed God’s Son by condemning him to death. You do not even suspect this
murderous but insane idea lies hidden there, for the ego’s destructive urge is so
intense that nothing short of the crucifixion of God’s Son can ultimately satisfy
it. It does not know who the Son of God is because it is blind.Yet let it perceive
guiltlessness anywhere, and it will try to destroy it because it is afraid.
4
Much of the ego’s strange behavior is directly attributable to its definition of
guilt. To the ego, the guiltless are guilty. Those who do not attack are its “enemies”
because, by not valuing its interpretation of salvation, they are in an excellent
3
236
237
iii. The
Chapter 12: The Problem of Guilt
position to let it go. They have approached the darkest and deepest cornerstone
in the ego’s foundation, and while the ego can withstand your raising all else to
question, it guards this one secret with its life, for its existence does depend on
keeping this secret. So it is this secret that we must look upon calmly, for the ego
cannot protect you against truth, and in its presence the ego is dispelled.
5
In the calm light of truth, let us recognize that you believe you have crucified
God’s Son.You have not admitted to this “terrible” secret because you still wish to
crucify him if you could find him.Yet the wish has hidden him from you because
it is very fearful, and you are afraid to find him. You have handled this wish to
kill yourself by not knowing who you are and identifying with something else.You
have projected guilt blindly and indiscriminately, but you have not uncovered its
source. For the ego does want to kill you, and if you identify with it, you must
believe its goal is yours.
6
We once said that the crucifixion is the symbol of the ego. When it was
confronted with the real guiltlessness of God’s Son, it did attempt to kill him,
and the reason it gave was that guiltlessness is blasphemous to God. To the ego
the ego is god, and guiltlessness must be interpreted as the final guilt which fully
justifies murder.You do not yet understand that all your fear of this course stems
ultimately from this interpretation, but if you will consider your reactions to it,
you will become increasingly convinced that this is so.
7
This course has explicitly stated that its goal for you is happiness and peace.
Yet you are afraid of it.You have been told again and again that it will make you
free, yet you react as if it is trying to imprison you. Most of the time you dismiss
it, but you do not dismiss the ego’s thought system.You have seen its results and you
still lack faith in it.You must, then, believe that by not learning the course, you are
protecting yourself. And you do not realize that it is only your guiltlessness which
can protect you.
8
The Atonement has always been interpreted as the release from guilt, and this
is correct if it is understood.Yet even when I have interpreted it for you, you have
rejected it and have not accepted it for yourself.You have recognized the futility
of the ego and its offerings, but though you do not want the ego, you do not look
upon the alternative with gladness.You are afraid of redemption, and you believe
it will kill you. Make no mistake about the depth of your fear. For you believe
that in the presence of truth you will turn on yourself and destroy yourself.
9
Little children, this is not so.Your “guilty secret” is nothing, and if you will but
bring it to the light, the light will dispel it. And then no dark cloud will remain
between you and the remembrance of your Father, for you will remember His
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Fear of Redemption
guiltless Son, who did not die, because he is immortal. And you will see that
you were redeemed with him and have never been separated from him. In this
understanding lies your remembering, for it is the recognition of love without
fear.There will be great joy in Heaven on your homecoming, and the joy will be
yours. For the redeemed son of man is the guiltless Son of God, and to recognize
him is your redemption.
iii. The
Fear
of
Redemption
You may wonder why it is so crucial that you look upon your hatred and
realize its full extent. You may also think that it would be easy enough for the
Holy Spirit to show it to you and dispel it, without the need for you to raise it to
awareness yourself.Yet there is one more complication which you have interposed
between yourself and the Atonement, which you do not yet realize. We have said
that no one will countenance fear if he recognizes it.Yet in your disordered state,
you are not afraid of fear. You do not like it, but it is not your desire to attack
which really frightens you. You are not seriously disturbed by your hostility. You
keep it hidden because you are more afraid of what it covers.
11
You could look even upon the ego’s darkest cornerstone without fear if you did
not believe that, without the ego, you would find within yourself something you
fear even more.You are not afraid of crucifixion.Your real terror is of redemption.
Under the ego’s dark foundation is the memory of God, and it is of this that
you are really afraid. For this memory would instantly restore you to your proper
place, and it is this place that you have sought to leave.
12
Your fear of attack is nothing compared to your fear of love. You would be
willing to look even upon your savage wish to kill God’s Son if you did not
believe that it saves you from love. For this wish caused the separation. You have
protected it because you do not want the separation healed, and you realize that,
by removing the dark cloud that obscures it, your love for your Father would
impel you to answer His call and leap into Heaven. You believe that attack is
salvation to prevent you from this. For still deeper than the ego’s foundation, and
much stronger than it will ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, and
His for you. This is what you really want to hide.
13
In honesty, is it not harder for you to say “I love” than “I hate”? You associate
love with weakness and hatred with strength, and your own real power seems to
you as your real weakness. For you could not control your joyous response to the
call of love if you heard it, and the whole world you think you control would
vanish. The Holy Spirit, then, seems to be attacking your fortress, for you would
10
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iv. Healing and Time
shut out God, and He does not will to be excluded.
14
You have built your whole insane belief system because you think you would
be helpless in God’s Presence, and you would save yourself from His love because
you think it would crush you into nothingness. You are afraid it would sweep
you away from yourself, and make you little. For you believe that magnitude lies
in defiance and that attack is grandeur.You think you have made a world which
God would destroy; and by loving Him, which you do, you would throw this
world away, which you would. Therefore, you have used the world to cover your
love, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego’s foundation, the closer
you come to the love that is hidden there. And it is this that frightens you.
15
You can accept insanity because you made it, but you cannot accept love
because you did not. You would rather be slaves of the crucifixion than Sons of
God in redemption. For your individual death is more valued than your living
oneness, and what is given you is not so dear as what you made. You are more
afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome. But
hatred can, for it enters of its will and cares not for yours.
16
The reason you must look upon your delusions and not keep them hidden is
that they do not rest on their own foundation. In concealment they appear to do so,
and thus they seem to be self-sustained. This is the fundamental illusion on which
they rest. For beneath them and concealed as long as they are hidden is the loving
mind that thought it made them in anger. And the pain in this mind is so apparent
when it is uncovered that its need of healing cannot be denied. Not all the tricks
and games you offer it can heal it, for here is the real crucifixion of God’s Son.
17
And yet he is not crucified. Here is both his pain and his healing, for the Holy
Spirit’s vision is merciful, and His remedy is quick. Do not hide suffering from
His sight, but bring it gladly to Him. Lay before His eternal sanity all your hurt,
and let Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His light, and
search your minds carefully for any thoughts which you may fear to uncover. For
He will heal every little thought which you have kept to hurt you and cleanse it
of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God.
18
Beneath all your grandiosity, which you hold so dear, is your real call for help.
For you call for love to your Father as your Father calls you to Himself. In that
place which you have hidden, you will only to unite with the Father in loving
remembrance of Him.You will find this place of truth as you see it in your brothers,
for though they may deceive themselves, like you they long for the grandeur that is
in them. And perceiving it you will welcome it, and it will be yours. For grandeur
is the right of God’s Son, and no illusions can satisfy him or save him from what he
240
is. Only his love is real, and he will be content only with his reality.
19
Save him from his illusions that you may accept the magnitude of your
Father in peace and joy. But exempt no one from your love, or you will be hiding
a dark place in your mind where the Holy Spirit is not welcome. And you will
exempt yourself from His healing power, for by not offering total love, you will
not be healed completely. Healing must be as complete as fear, for love cannot
enter where there is one spot of fear to mar its welcome.
20
You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds.
You were at peace until you asked for special favor. And God did not give it, for
the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father Who truly
loved His Son.Therefore you made of Him an unloving father, demanding of Him
what only such a father could give. And the peace of God’s Son was shattered, for
he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more
did he fear his real Father, having attacked his own glorious equality with Him.
21
In peace he needed nothing and asked for nothing. In war he demanded
everything and found nothing. For how could the gentleness of love respond to
his demands except by departing in peace and returning to the Father? If the Son
did not wish to remain in peace, he could not remain at all. For a darkened mind
cannot live in the light, and it must seek a place of darkness where it can believe
it is where it is not. God did not allow this to happen. Yet you demanded that it
happen and therefore believed that it was so.
22
To “single out” is to “make alone” and thus make lonely. God did not do this
to you. Could He set you apart, knowing that your peace lies in His Oneness? He
denied you only your request for pain, for suffering is not of His creation. Having
given you creation, He could not take it from you. He could but answer your
insane request with a sane answer which would abide with you in your insanity.
For His answer is the reference point beyond illusions from which you can look
back on them and see them as insane. But seek this place, and you will find it, for
love is in you and will lead you there.
iv.
Healing
and Time
And now the reason why you are afraid of this course should be apparent.
For this is a course on love because it is about you.You have been told that your
function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating.The ego
teaches that your function on earth is destruction and that you have no function
at all in Heaven. It would thus destroy you here and bury you here, leaving you
23
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iv. Healing and Time
no inheritance except the dust out of which it thinks you were made. As long
as it is reasonably satisfied with you, as its reasoning goes, it offers you oblivion.
When it becomes overtly savage, it offers you hell.
24
Yet neither oblivion nor hell is as unacceptable to you as Heaven. For your
definition of Heaven is hell and oblivion, and the real Heaven is the greatest
threat you think you could experience. For hell and oblivion are ideas which you
made up, and you are bent on demonstrating their reality to establish yours. If their
reality is questioned, you believe that yours is. For you believe that attack is your
reality and that your destruction is the final proof that you were right.
25
Under the circumstances, would it not be more desirable to have been wrong,
even apart from the fact that you were wrong? While it could perhaps be argued
that death suggests there was life, no one would claim that it proves there is life.
Even the past life which death might indicate could only have been futile if it
must come to this and needs this to prove that it was. You question Heaven, but
you do not question this.You could heal and be healed if you did question it. And
even though you know not Heaven, might it not be more desirable than death?
You have been as selective in your questioning as in your perception. An open
mind is more honest than this.
26
The ego has a very strange notion of time, and it is with this notion that
your questioning might well begin. The ego invests heavily in the past and in the
end believes that the past is the only aspect of time that is meaningful. You will
remember that we said its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity
by making the future like the past and thus avoiding the present. By the notion
of paying for the past in the future, the past becomes the determiner of the future,
making them continuous without an intervening present. For the ego uses the
present only as a brief transition to the future, in which it brings the past to the
future by interpreting the present in past terms.
27
Now has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds it of past hurts,
and it reacts to the present as if it were the past. The ego cannot tolerate release
from the past, and although the past is no more, the ego tries to preserve its
image by responding as if it were present. Thus it dictates reactions to those you
meet now from a past reference point, obscuring their present reality. In effect,
if you follow the ego’s dictates, you will react to your brothers as though they
were someone else, and this will surely prevent you from perceiving them as they
are. And you will receive messages from them out of your own past because, by
making it real in the present, you are forbidding yourself to let it go. You thus deny
yourself the message of release that every brother offers you now.
242
The shadowy figures from the past are precisely what you must escape. For
they are not real and have no hold over you unless you bring them with you.They
carry the spots of pain in your minds, directing you to attack in the present in
retaliation for a past that is no more. And this decision is one of future pain. Unless
you learn that past pain is delusional, you are choosing a future of illusions and
losing the endless opportunities which you could find for release in the present.
The ego would preserve your nightmares and prevent you from awakening and
understanding that they are past.
29
Would you recognize a holy encounter if you are merely perceiving it as a
meeting with your own past? For you are meeting no one, and the sharing of
salvation, which makes the encounter holy, is excluded from your sight.The Holy
Spirit teaches that you always meet yourself and the encounter is holy because
you are. The ego teaches that you always encounter your past, and because your
dreams were not holy, the future cannot be, and the present is without meaning. It
is evident that the Holy Spirit’s perception of time is the exact opposite of the
ego’s.The reason is equally clear, for they perceive the goal of time as diametrically
opposed.
30
The Holy Spirit interprets time’s purpose as rendering the need for it
unnecessary. Thus does He regard the function of time as temporary, serving
only His teaching function, which is temporary by definition. His emphasis is
therefore on the only aspect of time which can extend to the infinite, for now is
the closest approximation of eternity which this world offers. It is in the reality of
now, without past or future, that the beginning of the appreciation of eternity lies.
For only now is here, and it presents the opportunities for the holy encounters in
which salvation can be found.
31
The ego, on the other hand, regards the function of time as one of extending
itself in place of eternity, for like the Holy Spirit, the ego interprets the goal of
time as its own. The continuity of past and future under its direction is the only
purpose the ego perceives in time, and it closes over the present so that no gap in
its own continuity can occur. Its continuity, then, would keep you in time, while
the Holy Spirit would release you from it. It is His interpretation of the means of
salvation which you must learn to accept if you would share His goal of salvation
for you.
32
You too will interpret the function of time as you interpret yours. If you
accept your function in the world of time as healing, you will emphasize only the
aspect of time in which healing can occur. For healing cannot be accomplished
in the past and must be accomplished in the present to release the future. This
28
243
v. The Two
interpretation ties the future to the present and extends the present rather than the
past. But if you interpret your function as destruction, you will lose sight of the
present and hold on to the past to ensure a destructive future. And time will be as
you interpret it, for of itself it is nothing.
v. The Two
Emotions
We have said that you have but two emotions, love and fear. One is changeless
but continually exchanged, being offered by the eternal to the eternal. In this
exchange it is extended, for it increases as it is given. The other has many forms,
for the content of individual illusions differs greatly. Yet they have one thing in
common—they are all insane. They are made of sights which are not seen and
sounds which are not heard. They make up a private world which cannot be
shared. For they are meaningful only to their maker, and so they have no meaning
at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only he perceives them.
34
Each one peoples his world with figures from his individual past, and it is
because of this that private worlds do differ.Yet the figures that he sees were never
real, for they are made up only of his reactions to his brothers and do not include
their reactions to him. Therefore he does not see that he made them and that
they are not whole. For these figures have no witnesses, being perceived in one
separate mind only.
35
It is through these strange and shadowy figures that the insane relate to their
insane world. For they see only those who remind them of these images, and it is
to them that they relate.Thus do they communicate with those who are not there,
and it is they who answer them, and no one hears their answer save him who
called upon them, and he alone believes they answered him. Projection makes
perception, and you cannot see beyond it. Again and again have men attacked each
other because they saw in them a shadow figure in their own private world. And
thus it is that you must attack yourself first, for what you attack is not in others.
Its only reality is in your own mind, and by attacking others, you are literally
attacking what is not there.
36
The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize that
they have condemned themselves. They do not wish to die, yet they will not let
condemnation go. And so they separate into their private worlds, where everything
is disordered and where what is within appears to be without.Yet what is within
they do not see, for the reality of their brothers they cannot see.
37
You have but two emotions, yet in your private world you react to each of
33
244
Emotions
them as though it were the other. For love cannot abide in a world apart, where
when it comes it is not recognized. If you see your own hatred as your brother,
you are not seeing him. Everyone draws nigh unto what he loves and recoils
from what he fears. And you react with fear to love and draw away from it. Yet
fear attracts you, and believing it is love, you call it to yourself.Your private world
is filled with the figures of fear you have invited into it, and all the love your
brothers offer you, you do not see. As you look with open eyes upon your world,
it must occur to you that you have withdrawn into insanity.
38
You see what is not there, and you hear what is soundless. Your behavioral
manifestations of emotions are the opposite of what the emotions are. You
communicate with no one, and you are as isolated from reality as if you were
alone in all the universe. In your madness, you overlook reality completely, and you
see only your own split mind everywhere you look. God calls you and you do not
hear, for you are preoccupied with your own voice. And the vision of Christ is
not in your sight, for you look upon yourself alone.
39
Little children, would you offer this to your Father? For if you offer it to
yourself, you are offering it to Him. And He will not return it, for it is unworthy
of you because it is unworthy of Him. Yet He would release you from it and set
you free. His sane answer tells you that what you have offered yourself is not true,
but His offering to you has never changed.You who know not what you do can
learn what insanity is and look beyond it. It is given you to learn how to deny
insanity and come forth from your private world in peace.
40
You will see all that you denied in your brothers because you denied it in
yourself. For you will love them, and by drawing nigh unto them, you will draw
them to yourself, perceiving them as witnesses to your reality, which you share
with God. I am with them as I am with you, and we will draw them from their
private worlds, for as we are united, so would we unite with them. The Father
welcomes all of us in gladness, and gladness is what we should offer Him. For
every Son of God is given you to whom God gave Himself. And it is God Whom
you must offer them to recognize His gift to you.
41
Vision depends on light, and you cannot see in darkness.Yet in the darkness
in the private world of sleep, you see in dreams, although your eyes are closed.
And it is here that what you see you made. But let the darkness go, and all you
made you will no longer see, for sight of it depends upon denying vision.Yet from
denying vision, it does not follow that you cannot see. But this is what denial does,
for by it you accept insanity, believing you can make a private world and rule your
own perceptions.Yet for this, light must be excluded. Dreams disappear when light
245
vi. Finding the
has come and you can see.
42
Do not seek vision through your eyes, for you made your way of seeing that
you might see in darkness, and in this you are deceived. Beyond this darkness and
yet still within you is the vision of Christ, Who looks on all in light. Your vision
comes from fear, as His from love. And He sees for you as your witness to the real
world. He is the Holy Spirit’s manifestation, looking always on the real world
and calling forth its witnesses and drawing them unto you. For He loves what He
sees within you, and He would extend it. And He will not return unto the Father
until He has extended your perception even unto Him. And there perception is
no more, for He has returned you to the Father with Him.
43
You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was given you. Each
is a way of seeing, and different worlds arise from their different visions. See through
the vision that is given you, for through Christ’s vision He beholds Himself. And
seeing what He is, He knows His Father. Beyond your darkest dreams, He sees
God’s guiltless Son within you, shining in perfect radiance, which is undimmed
by your dreams. And this you will see as you look with Him, for His vision is His
gift of love to you, given Him of the Father for you.
44
The Holy Spirit is the light in which Christ stands revealed. And all who
would behold Him can see Him, for they have asked for light. Nor will they see
Him alone, for He is no more alone than they are. Because they saw the Son, they
have risen in Him to the Father. And all this will they understand because they
looked within and saw beyond the darkness the Christ in them and recognized
Him. In the sanity of His vision, they looked upon themselves with love, seeing
themselves as the Holy Spirit sees them. And with this vision of the truth in them
came all the beauty of the world to shine upon them.
vi.
Finding
the
Present
To perceive truly is to be aware of all reality through the awareness of your own.
But for this no illusions can rise to meet your sight, for all reality leaves no room for
any error. This means that you perceive a brother only as you see him now. His past
has no reality in the present, and you cannot see it. Your past reactions to him are also
not there, and if it is to them that you react now, you see but an image of him which
you made and cherish instead of him. In your questioning of illusions, ask yourself if
it is really sane to perceive what was now. If you remember the past as you look upon
your brother, you will be unable to perceive the reality that is now.
46
You consider it “natural” to use your past experience as the reference point
45
246
Present
from which to judge the present.Yet this is unnatural because it is delusional.When
you have learned to look upon everyone with no reference at all to the past, either
his or yours as you perceived it, you will be able to learn from what you see now.
For the past can cast no shadow to darken the present unless you are afraid of light.
And only if you are would you choose to bring this darkness with you, and by
holding it in your minds, see it as a dark cloud that shrouds your brothers and
conceals their reality from your sight.
47
This darkness is in you. The Christ revealed to you now has no past, for He
is changeless, and in His changelessness lies your release. For if He is as He was
created, there is no guilt in Him. No cloud of guilt has risen to obscure Him, and
He stands revealed in everyone you meet because you see Him through Himself.
To be born again is to let the past go and look without condemnation upon the
present. For the cloud which obscures God’s Son to you is the past, and if you
would have it past and gone, you must not see it now. If you see it now in your
delusions, it has not gone from you, although it is not there.
48
Time can release as well as imprison, depending on whose interpretation of
it you use. Past, present, and future are not continuous unless you force continuity
on them.You can perceive them as continuous and make them so for you. But do
not be deceived and then believe that this is how it is, for to believe that reality is
what you would have it be according to your use for it is delusional. You would
destroy time’s continuity by breaking it into past, present and future for your own
purposes. You would anticipate the future on the basis of your past experience
and plan for it accordingly. Yet by doing so, you are aligning past and future and
not allowing the miracle, which could intervene between them, to free you to be
born again.
49
The miracle enables you to see your brother without his past and so perceive
him as born again. His errors are all past, and by perceiving him without them,
you are releasing him. And since his past is yours, you share in this release. Let
no dark cloud out of your past obscure him from you, for truth lies only in the
present, and you will find it if you seek it there.You have looked for it where it is
not and therefore have not found it. Learn, then, to seek it where it is, and it will
dawn on eyes that see. Your past was made in anger, and if you use it to attack
the present, you will not see the freedom that the present holds. Judgment and
condemnation are behind you, and unless you bring them with you, you will see
that you are free of them.
50
Look lovingly upon the present, for it holds the only things that are forever
true. All healing lies within it because its continuity is real. It extends to all
247
vii. Attainment of the
aspects of consciousness at the same time and thus enables them to reach each
other. The present is before time was and will be when time is no more. In it is
everything that is eternal, and they are one.Their continuity is timeless, and their
communication is unbroken, for they are not separated by the past. Only the past
can separate, and it is nowhere.
51
The present offers you your brothers in the light that would unite you with
them and free you from the past. Would you, then, hold the past against them?
For if you do, you are choosing to remain in the darkness that is not there and
refusing to accept the light that is offered you. For the light of perfect vision is
freely given as it is freely received and can be accepted only without limit. In this
one still dimension of time, which does not change and where there is no sight of
what you were, you look at Christ and call His witnesses to shine on you because
you called them forth. And they will not deny the truth in you because you looked
for it in them and found it there.
52
Now is the time of salvation, for now is the release from time. Reach out to
all your brothers, and touch them with the touch of Christ. In timeless union
with them is your continuity, unbroken because it is wholly shared. God’s guiltless
Son is only light. There is no darkness in him anywhere, for he is whole. Call all
your brothers to witness to his wholeness, as I am calling you to join with me.
Every voice has a part in the song of redemption, the hymn of gladness and
thanksgiving for the light to the Creator of light. The holy light that shines forth
from God’s Son is the witness that his light is of his Father.
53
Shine on your brothers in remembrance of your Creator, for you will
remember Him as you call forth the witnesses to His creation. Those whom you
heal bear witness to your healing, for in their wholeness you will see your own.
And as your hymns of praise and gladness rise to your Creator, He will return
your thanks in His clear answer to your call. For it can never be that His Son
called upon Him and remained unanswered. His call to you is but your call to
Him. And in Him you are answered by His peace.
54
Children of light, you know not that the light is in you.Yet you will find it
through its witnesses, for having given light to them, they will return it. Everyone
you see in light brings your light closer to your own awareness. Love always leads to
love.The sick, who ask for love, are grateful for it, and in their joy they shine with
holy thanks. And this they offer you, who gave them joy. They are your guides to
joy, for having received it of you, they would keep it.You have established them as
guides to peace, for you have made it manifest in them. And seeing it, its beauty
calls you home.
248
Real World
There is a light which this world cannot give. Yet you can give it, as it was
given you. And as you give it, it shines forth to call you from the world and
follow it. For this light will attract you as nothing in this world can do. And you
will lay aside the world and find another. This other world is bright with love,
which you have given it. And here will everything remind you of your Father
and his Holy Son. Light is unlimited and spreads across this world in quiet joy.
All those you brought with you will shine on you, and you will shine on them in
gratitude because they brought you here.Your light will join with theirs in power
so compelling that it will draw the others out of darkness as you look on them.
56
Awakening unto Christ is following the laws of love of your free will and
out of quiet recognition of the truth in them. The attraction of light must draw
you willingly, and willingness is signified by giving. Those who accept love of you
become your willing witnesses to the love you gave them, and it is they who hold
it out to you. In sleep you are alone, and your awareness is narrowed to yourself.
And that is why the nightmares come. You dream of isolation because your eyes
are closed. You do not see your brothers, and in the darkness you cannot look
upon the light you gave to them.
57
And yet the laws of love are not suspended because you sleep. And you have
followed them through all your nightmares and have been faithful in your giving,
for you were not alone. Even in sleep has Christ protected you, ensuring the real
world for you when you wake. In your name He has given for you and given you
the gifts He gave. God’s Son is still as loving as his Father. Continuous with his
Father, he has no past apart from Him. So he has never ceased to be his Father’s
witness and his own. Although he slept, Christ’s vision did not leave him. And so it
is that he can call unto himself the witnesses that teach him that he never slept.
55
58
Real World
Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself,
59
The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets
where people walk alone and separate. There are no stores where people buy
an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and
night comes not upon it.There is no day that brightens and grows dim.There
is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever.
The world you see must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different
kind of vision. You cannot see both worlds, for each of them involves a different kind
of seeing and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because
60
249
you have denied the other. Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to
you as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is not the same
because their real attraction to you is unequal.
61
You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since
time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made
have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling
assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not
dear, for it is old and tired and ready to return to dust even as you made it. This
aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not
give it that, and so although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the
road that leads away from it into another world.
62
Yet the real world has the power to touch you even here because you love it.
And what you call with love will come to you. Love always answers, being unable
to deny a call for help or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it from every
part of this strange world you made but do not want. The only effort you need
make to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did not make is
willingness to learn the one you made is false.
63
You have been wrong about the world because you have misjudged yourself.
From such a twisted reference point what could you see? All vision starts with the
perceiver who judges what is true and what is false. And what he judges false he
does not see. You who would judge reality cannot see it, for whenever judgment
enters, reality has slipped away. The out of mind is out of sight because what is
denied is there but is not recognized. Christ is still there, although you know Him
not. His Being does not depend upon your recognition. He lives within you in
the quiet present and waits for you to leave the past behind and enter into the
world He holds out to you in love.
64
No one in this distracted world but has seen some glimpses of the other
world about him.Yet while he still lays value on his own, he will deny the vision
of the other world, maintaining that he loves what he loves not and following
not the road that love points out. Love leads so gladly! And as you follow Him,
you will rejoice that you have found His company and learned of Him the joyful
journey home.You wait but for yourself. To give this sad world over and exchange
your errors for the peace of God is but your will. And Christ will always offer you
the Will of God in recognition that you share it with Him.
65
It is God’s Will that nothing touch His Son except Himself, and nothing else
comes nigh unto him. He is as safe from pain as God Himself,Who watches over
him in everything. The world about him shines with love because God placed
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Real World
him in Himself where pain is not and love surrounds him without end or flaw.
Disturbance of his peace can never be. In perfect sanity he looks on love, for it
is all about him and within him. He must deny the world of pain the instant he
perceives the arms of love around him. And from this point of safety, he looks
quietly about him and recognizes that the world is one with him.
66
The peace of God passeth your understanding only in the past.Yet here it is,
and you can understand it now. God loves His Son forever, and His Son returns
his Father’s love forever.The real world is the way that leads you to remembrance
of this one thing that is wholly true and wholly yours. For all else you have lent
yourself in time, and it will fade. But this one thing is always yours, being the gift
of God unto His Son.Your one reality was given you, and by it God created you
as one with Him.
67
You will first dream of peace and then awaken to it. Your first exchange of
what you made for what you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy
dreams of love. In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects
the world of dreams, where all perception is. Knowledge needs no correction.
Yet the dreams of love lead unto knowledge. In them you see nothing fearful, and
because of this, they are the welcome that you offer knowledge. Love waits on
welcome, not on time, and the real world is but your welcome of what always
was. Therefore, the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening
to what you have not lost. Praise, then, the Father for the perfect sanity of His
most holy Son.
68
Your Father knoweth that you have need of nothing. In Heaven this is so,
for what could you need in eternity? In your world you do need things because
it is a world of scarcity in which you find yourself because you are lacking.Yet can
you find yourself in such a world? Without the Holy Spirit, the answer would
be no. Yet because of Him, the answer is a joyous yes! As Mediator between
the two worlds, He knows what you have need of and what will not hurt you.
Ownership is a dangerous concept if it is left to you. The ego wants to have
things for salvation, for possession is its law. Possession for its own sake is the ego’s
fundamental creed, a basic cornerstone in the churches that it builds unto itself.
And at its altar it demands you lay all of the things it bids you get, leaving you no
joy in them.
69
Everything that the ego tells you that you need will hurt you. For although
the ego urges you again and again to get, it leaves you nothing, for what you
get, it will demand of you. And even from the very hands that grasped it, it will
be wrenched and hurled into the dust. For where the ego sees salvation, it sees
251
separation, and so you lose whatever you have gotten in its name. Therefore ask
not of yourselves what you need, for you do not know and your advice unto
yourself will hurt you. For what you think you need will merely serve to tighten
up your world against the light and render you unwilling to question the value
that this world can really hold for you.
70
Only the Holy Spirit knows what you need. For He will give you all things
that do not block the way to light. And what else could you need? In time He
gives you all the things that you need have and will renew them as long as you
have need of them. He will take nothing from you as long as you have any need
of it. And yet He knows that everything you need is temporary and will but
last until you step aside from all your needs and learn that all of them have been
fulfilled. Therefore He has no investment in the things that He supplies except
to make certain that you will not use them on behalf of lingering in time. He
knows that you are not at home there, and He wills no delay to wait upon your
joyous homecoming.
71
Leave, then, your needs to Him. He will supply them with no emphasis at all
upon them. What comes to you of Him comes safely, for He will ensure it never
can become a dark spot, hidden in your mind and kept to hurt you. Under His
guidance, you will travel light and journey lightly, for His sight is ever on the
journey’s end which is His goal. God’s Son is not a traveler through outer worlds.
However holy his perception may become, no world outside himself holds his
inheritance. Within himself he has no needs, for light needs nothing but to shine
in peace and from itself to let the rays extend in quiet to infinity.
72
Whenever you are tempted to undertake a foolish journey that would lead
away from light, remember what you really want and say,
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Real World
the peace of mind that we must find together. The Holy Spirit will teach you to
awaken unto us and to yourself. This is the only real need to be fulfilled in time.
Salvation from the world lies only here. My peace I give you. Take it of me in glad
exchange for all the world has offered but to take away. And we will spread it like
a veil of light across the world’s sad face, in which we hide our brothers from the
world, and it from them.
76
We cannot sing redemption’s hymn alone. My task is not completed until
I have lifted every voice with mine. And yet it is not mine, for as it is my gift to
you, so was it the Father’s gift to me, given me through His Spirit.The sound of it
will banish sorrow from the mind of God’s most holy Son, where it cannot abide.
Healing in time is needed, for joy cannot establish its eternal reign where sorrow
dwells.You dwell not here, but in eternity.You travel but in dreams while safe at
home. Give thanks to every part of you that you have taught how to remember
you. Thus does the Son of God give thanks unto his Father for his purity.
The Holy Spirit leads me unto Christ,
and where else would I go?
What need have I but to awake in Him?
Then follow Him in joy, with faith that He will lead you safely through all
dangers to your peace of mind that this world sets before you. Kneel not before
the altars to sacrifice and seek not what you will surely lose. Content yourselves
with what you will as surely keep and be not restless, for you undertake a quiet
journey to the peace of God, where He would have you be in quietness.
75
In me you have already overcome every temptation that would hold you
back. We walk together on the way to quietness that is the gift of God. Hold
me dear, for what except your brothers can you need? We will restore to you
74
252
253
ii. The
thirteen
From Perception to Knowledge
i.
Introduction
A
ll therapy is release from the past. That is why the Holy Spirit is the only
therapist. He teaches that the past does not exist, a fact which belongs
to the sphere of knowledge and which therefore no one in the world knows.
It would indeed be impossible to be in the world with this knowledge. For the
mind that knows this unequivocally knows also that it dwells in eternity and
utilizes no perception at all. It therefore does not consider where it is because the
concept “where” does not mean anything to it. It knows that it is everywhere, just
as it has everything, and forever.
13:2
The very real difference between perception and knowledge becomes
quite apparent if you consider this: There is nothing partial about knowledge.
Every aspect is whole, and therefore no aspect is separate. You are an aspect of
knowledge, being in the Mind of God, Who knows you. All knowledge must be
yours, for in you is all knowledge. Perception at its loftiest is never complete.
Even the perception of the Holy Spirit, as perfect as perception can be, is without
meaning in Heaven. Perception can reach everywhere under His guidance, for
the vision of Christ beholds everything in light.Yet no perception, however holy,
will last forever.
ii. The
Role
of
Healing
Perfect perception, then, has many elements in common with knowledge,
making transfer to it possible.Yet the last step must be taken by God because the
last step in your redemption, which seems to be in the future, was accomplished
by God in your creation. The separation has not interrupted it. Creation cannot
be interrupted. The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality with no
effect at all. The miracle, without a function in Heaven, is needful here. Aspects
of reality can still be seen, and they will replace aspects of unreality. Aspects of
3
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Role of Healing
reality can be seen in everything and everywhere.Yet only God can gather them
together by crowning them as one with the final gift of eternity.
4
Apart from the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit has no function. He is
not separate from either, being in the mind of both and knowing that Mind is
one. He is a Thought of God, and God has given Him to you because He has
no Thoughts He does not share. His message speaks of timelessness in time, and
that is why Christ’s vision looks on everything with love.Yet even Christ’s vision
is not His reality. The golden aspects of reality which spring to light under His
loving gaze are partial glimpses of the Heaven that lies beyond them.
5
This is the miracle of creation; that it is one forever. Every miracle you offer to
the Son of God is but the true perception of one aspect of the whole. Though
every aspect is the whole, you cannot know this until you see that every aspect is
the same, perceived in the same light and therefore one. Everyone seen without the
past thus brings you nearer to the end of time by bringing healed and healing
sight into the darkness and enabling the world to see. For light must come into
the darkened world to make Christ’s vision possible even here. Help Him to give
His gift of light to all who think they wander in the darkness, and let Him gather
them into His quiet sight that makes them one.
6
They are all the same; all beautiful and equal in their holiness. And He will
offer them unto His Father as they were offered unto Him. There is one miracle,
as there is one reality. And every miracle you do contains them all, as every aspect
of reality you see blends quietly into the One Reality of God. The only miracle
that ever was is God’s most holy Son, created in the One Reality that is his
Father. Christ’s vision is His gift to you. His Being is His Father’s gift to Him.
7
Be you content with healing, for Christ’s gift you can bestow, and your Father’s
gift you cannot lose. Offer Christ’s gift to everyone and everywhere, for miracles
offered the Son of God through the Holy Spirit attune you to reality. The Holy
Spirit knows your part in the redemption and who are seeking you and where to
find them. Knowledge is far beyond your individual concern.You, who are part
of it and all of it, need only realize that it is of the Father, not of you.Your role in
the redemption leads you to it by reestablishing its oneness in your minds.
8
When you have seen your brothers as yourself, you will be released to knowledge,
having learned to free yourself of Him Who knows of freedom. Unite with me
under the holy banner of His teaching, and as we grow in strength, the power
of God’s Son will move in us, and we will leave no one untouched and no one
left alone. And suddenly time will be over, and we will all unite in the eternity
of God the Father. The holy light you saw outside yourself in every miracle you
255
iii. The
Chapter 13: fROM pERCEPTION TO kNOWLEDGE
offered to your brothers will be returned to you. And knowing that the light is in
you, your creations will be there with you, as you are in your Father.
9
As miracles in this world join you to your brothers, so do your creations establish
your fatherhood in Heaven. You are the witnesses to the Fatherhood of God, and
He has given you the power to create the witnesses to your fatherhood in Heaven.
The miracle which God created is perfect, as are the miracles which you created in
His name. They need no healing, nor do you when you know them.
10
Yet in this world, your perfection is unwitnessed. God knows it, but you do not,
and so you do not share His witness to it. Nor do you witness unto Him, for reality
is witnessed to as one. God waits your witness to His Son and to Himself. The
miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven and to Him.They witness to what
you do not know, and as they reach the gates of Heaven, God will open them. For
never would He leave His own beloved Son outside them and beyond Himself.
iii. The
Shadow
of
Guilt
Guilt remains the only thing that hides the Father, for guilt is the attack upon
His Son. The guilty always condemn, and having done so, they will condemn,
linking the future to the past as is the ego’s law. Fidelity unto this law lets no light
in, for it demands fidelity to darkness and forbids awakening. The ego’s laws are
strict, and breaches are severely punished.Therefore give no obedience to its laws,
for they are laws of punishment. And those who follow them believe that they
are guilty, and so they must condemn. Between the future and the past, the laws
of God must intervene if you would free yourselves. Atonement stands between
them like a lamp that shines so brightly that the chain of darkness in which you
bound yourselves will disappear.
12
Release from guilt is the ego’s whole undoing. Make no one fearful, for his
guilt is yours, and by obeying the ego’s harsh commandments, you bring its
condemnation of yourself, and you will not escape the punishment it offers those
who obey it. The ego rewards fidelity to it with pain, for faith in it is pain. And
faith can be rewarded only in terms of the belief in which the faith was placed.
Faith makes the power of belief, and where it is invested determines its reward. For
faith is always given what is treasured, and what is treasured is returned to you.
13
The world can give you only what you gave it, for being nothing but your
own projection, it has no meaning apart from what you found in it and placed
your faith in. Be faithful unto darkness and you will not see, because your faith
will be rewarded as you gave it.You will accept your treasure, and if you place your
11
256
Shadow of Guilt
faith in the past, the future will be like it. Whatever you hold as dear, you think is
yours. The power of your valuing will make it so.
14
Atonement brings a re-evaluation of everything you cherish, for it is the
means by which the Holy Spirit can separate the false and the true, which you
have accepted into your minds without distinction. Therefore, you cannot value
one without the other, and guilt has become as true for you as innocence. You
do not believe the Son of God is guiltless because you see the past and see him
not. When you condemn a brother, you are saying, “I who was guilty choose to
remain so.”You have denied his freedom, and by so doing you have denied the
witness unto yours. You could as easily have freed him from the past and lifted from
his mind the cloud of guilt that binds him to it. And in his freedom would have
been your own.
15
Lay not his guilt upon him, for his guilt lies in his secret that he thinks that he
has done this unto you.Would you, then, teach him that he is right in his delusion?
The idea that the guiltless Son of God can attack himself and make himself guilty
is insane. In any form, in anyone, believe this not. For sin and condemnation are the
same, and the belief in one is faith in the other, calling for punishment instead of
love. Nothing can justify insanity, and to call for punishment upon yourself must
be insane.
16
See no one, then, as guilty, and you will affirm the truth of guiltlessness unto
yourself. In every condemnation that you offer the Son of God lies the conviction
of your own guilt. If you would have the Holy Spirit make you free of it, accept
His offer of Atonement for all your brothers. For so you learn that it is true for
you. Remember always that it is impossible to condemn the Son of God in part.
Those whom you see as guilty become the witnesses to guilt in you, and you will
see it there, for it is there until it is undone. Guilt is always in your own mind,
which has condemned itself. Project it not, for while you do, it cannot be undone.
With everyone whom you release from guilt, great is the joy in Heaven, where
the witnesses to your fatherhood rejoice.
17
Guilt makes you blind, for while you see one spot of guilt within you, you
will not see the light. And by projecting it, the world seems dark and shrouded in
your guilt.You throw a dark veil over it and cannot see it because you cannot look
within. You are afraid of what you would see there, but it is not there. The thing you
fear is gone. If you would look within, you would see only the Atonement, shining
in quiet and in peace upon the altar to your Father.
18
Do not be afraid to look within. The ego tells you all is black with guilt
within you and bids you not to look. Instead, it bids you look upon your brothers
257
and see the guilt in them. Yet this you cannot do without remaining blind. For those
who see their brothers in the dark, and guilty in the dark in which they shroud
them, are too afraid to look upon the light within. Within you is not what you
believe is there and what you put your faith in.
19
Within you is the holy sign of perfect faith your Father has in you. He does
not value you as you do. He knows Himself and knows the truth in you. He
knows there is no difference, for He knows not of differences. Can you see guilt
where God knows there is perfect innocence? You can deny His knowledge, but
you cannot change it. Look, then, upon the light He placed within you and learn
that what you feared was there has been replaced with love.
iv.
Release
and
Restoration
You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain
where it is not. The doubtful service of displacement is to hide the real source
of your guilt and keep from your awareness the full perception that it is insane.
Displacement always is maintained by the illusion that the source, from which
attention is diverted, must be true and must be fearful, or you would not have
displaced the guilt onto what you believed to be less fearful. You are therefore
willing with little opposition to look upon all sorts of “sources” underneath
awareness, provided that they are not the deeper source to which they bear no
real relationship at all.
21
Insane ideas have no real relationships, for that is why they are insane. No real
relationship can rest on guilt or even hold one spot of it to mar its purity. For all
relationships which guilt has touched are used but to avoid the person and the
guilt. What strange relationships you have made for this strange purpose! And
you forgot that real relationships are holy and cannot be used by you at all. They
are used only by the Holy Spirit, and it is that which makes them pure. For by
preempting for your own ends what you should have given to Him, He cannot
use them unto your release. No one who would unite in any way with anyone for
his own salvation will find it in that strange relationship. It is not shared, and so it
is not real.
22
In any union with a brother in which you seek to lay your guilt upon him
or share it with him or perceive his own, you will feel guilty. Nor will you find
satisfaction and peace with him, because your union with him is not real. You
will see guilt in that relationship because you put it there. It is inevitable that
those who suffer guilt will attempt to displace it, because they do believe in it.Yet,
though they suffer, they will not look within and let it go.They cannot know they
20
258
iv. Release and
Restoration
love and cannot understand what loving is.Their main concern is to perceive the
source of guilt outside themselves, beyond their own control.
23
When you maintain that you are guilty but the source lies in the past, you are
not looking inward. The past is not in you. Your weird associations to it have no
meaning in the present. Yet you let them stand between you and your brothers,
with whom you find no real relationships at all. Can you expect to use your
brothers as a means to “solve” the past and still to see them as they really are?
Salvation is not found by those who use their brothers to resolve problems which
are not there.You wanted not salvation in the past. Would you impose your idle
wishes on the present and hope to find salvation now?
24
Determine, then, to be not as you were. Use no relationship to hold you
to the past, but with each one each day be born again. A minute, even less, will
be enough to free you from the past and give your mind in peace over to the
Atonement. When everyone is welcome to you as you would have yourself be
welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you. For you will have accepted
the Atonement, which shone within you all the while you dreamed of guilt and
would not look within and see it.
25
As long as you believe that guilt is justified in any way in anyone whatever he may
do, you will not look within, where you would always find Atonement. The end of
guilt will never come as long as you believe there is a reason for it. For you must learn
that guilt is always totally insane and has no reason. The Holy Spirit seeks not to
dispel reality. If guilt were real, Atonement would not be. The purpose of Atonement
is to dispel illusions, not to establish them as real and then forgive them.
26
The Holy Spirit does not keep illusions in your mind to frighten you and
show them to you fearfully to demonstrate what He has saved you from. What
He has saved you from is gone. Give no reality to guilt, and see no reason for it.
The Holy Spirit does what God would have Him do and has always done so. He
has seen separation, but knows of union. He teaches healing, but He also knows
of creation. He would have you see and teach as He does, and through Him.Yet
what He knows, you do not know, though it is yours.
27
Now it is given you to heal and teach, to make what will be now. As yet it is
not now. The Son of God believes that he is lost in guilt, alone in a dark world
where pain is pressing everywhere upon him from without. When he has looked
within and seen the radiance there, he will remember how much his Father loves
him. And it will seem incredible that he has ever thought his Father loved him
not and looked upon him as condemned. The moment that you realize guilt is
insane, wholly unjustified, and wholly without reason, you will not fear to look
259
iv. Release and
upon the Atonement and accept it wholly.
28
You who have been unmerciful unto yourselves do not remember your
Father’s Love. And looking without mercy upon your brothers, you do not
remember how much you love Him.Yet it is forever true. In shining peace within
you is the perfect purity in which you were created. Fear not to look upon the
lovely truth in you. Look through the cloud of guilt that dims your vision, and
look past darkness to the holy place where you will see the light. The altar to
your Father is as pure as He Who raised it to Himself. Nothing can keep from
you what Christ would have you see. His will is like His Father’s, and He offers
mercy to every Child of God, as He would have you do.
29
Release from guilt as you would be released. There is no other way to look
within and see the light of love shining as steadily and as surely as God Himself
has always loved His Son. And as his son loves Him. There is no fear in love, for
love is guiltless.You who have always loved your Father can have no fear for any
reason to look within and see your holiness. You cannot be as you believed you
were. Your guilt is without reason, because it is not in the Mind of God where
you are. And this is reason, which the Holy Spirit would restore to you. He would
remove only illusions. All else He would have you see. And in Christ’s vision, He
would show you the perfect purity that is forever within God’s Son.
30
You cannot enter into real relationships with any of God’s Sons unless you
love them all and equally. Love is not special. If you single out part of the Sonship
for your love, you are imposing guilt on all your relationships and making them
unreal.You can love only as God loves. Seek not to love unlike Him, for there is
no love apart from His. Until you recognize that this is true, you will have no idea
what love is like. No one who condemns a brother can see himself as guiltless in
the peace of God. If he is guiltless and in peace and sees it not, he is delusional
and has not looked upon himself. To him I say,
31
Behold the Son of God and look upon his purity and
be still. In quiet look upon his holiness and offer thanks
unto his Father that no guilt has ever touched him.
No illusion that you have ever held against him has touched his innocence
in any way. His shining purity, wholly untouched by guilt and wholly loving, is
bright within you. Let us look upon him together and love him. For in our love
of him is your guiltlessness. But look upon yourself, and gladness and appreciation
for what you see will banish guilt forever. I thank You, Father, for the purity of
Your most holy Son, whom You have created guiltless forever.
32
260
Restoration
Like you my faith and my belief are centered on what I treasure.The difference
is that I love only what God loves with me, and because of this, I treasure you
beyond the value that you set on yourselves, even unto the worth that God has
placed upon you. I love all that He created, and all my faith and my belief I offer
unto it. My faith in you is strong as all the love I give my Father. My trust in
you is without limit and without the fear that you will hear me not. I thank the
Father for your loveliness and for the many gifts that you will let me offer to the
Kingdom in honor of its wholeness, which is of God.
34
Praise be unto you who make the Father one with His own Son. Alone we
are all lowly, but together we shine with brightness so intense that none of us
alone can even think on it. Before the glorious radiance of the Kingdom, guilt
melts away and, transformed into kindness, will never more be what it was. Every
reaction that you experience will be so purified that it is fitting as a hymn of
praise unto your Father. See only praise of Him in what He has created, for He
will never cease His praise of you. United in this praise, we stand before the gates
of Heaven where we will surely enter in our blamelessness. God loves you. Could
I, then, lack faith in you and love Him perfectly?
35
Forgetfulness and sleep and even death become the ego’s best advice for
how to deal with the perceived and harsh intrusion of guilt on peace. Yet no
one sees himself in conflict and ravaged by a cruel war unless he believes that
both opponents in the war are real. Believing this, he must escape, for such a war
would surely end his peace of mind and so destroy him.Yet if he could but realize
the war is between forces that are real and unreal powers, he could look upon
himself and see his freedom. No one finds himself ravaged and torn in endless
battles which he himself perceives as wholly without meaning.
36
God would not have His Son embattled, and so His Son’s imagined “enemy,”
which he made, is totally unreal. You are but trying to escape a bitter war from
which you have escaped. The war is gone. For you have heard the hymn of
freedom rising unto Heaven. Gladness and joy belong to God for your release,
because you made it not. Yet as you made not freedom, so you made not a war
that could endanger freedom. Nothing destructive ever was or will be. The war,
the guilt, the past are gone as one into the unreality from which they came.
33
261
v. The
v. The
Guarantee
of
Heaven
When we are all united in Heaven, you will value nothing that you value here.
For nothing that you value here you value wholly, and so you do not value it at
all. Value is where God placed it, and the value of what God esteems cannot be
judged, for it has been established. It is wholly of value. It can merely be appreciated
or not. To value it partially is not to know its value. In Heaven is everything God
valued and nothing else. Heaven is perfectly unambiguous. Everything is clear
and bright and calls forth one response. There is no darkness, and there is no
contrast. There is no variation. There is no interruption. There is a sense of peace
so deep that no dream in this world has ever brought even a dim imagining of
what it is.
38
Nothing in this world can give this peace, for nothing in this world is wholly
shared. Perfect perception can merely show you what is capable of being wholly
shared. It can also show you the results of sharing while you still remember the
results of not sharing. The Holy Spirit points quietly to the contrast, knowing that
you will finally let Him judge the difference for you, allowing Him to demonstrate
which must be true. He has perfect faith in your final judgment because He knows
that He will make it for you.To doubt this would be to doubt that His mission will
be fulfilled. How is this possible, when His mission is of God?
39
You whose minds are darkened by doubt and guilt, remember this: God
gave the Holy Spirit to you and gave Him the mission to remove all doubt
and every trace of guilt that His dear Son has laid upon himself. It is impossible
that this mission fail. Nothing can prevent what God would have accomplished
from accomplishment.Whatever your reactions to the Holy Spirit’s Voice may be,
whatever voice you choose to listen to, whatever strange thoughts may occur to
you, God’s will is done.You will find the peace in which He has established you,
because He does not change His Mind. He is invariable as the peace in which
you dwell and of which the Holy Spirit reminds you.
40
You will not remember change and shift in Heaven.You have need of contrast
only here. Contrast and differences are necessary teaching aids, for by them you
learn what to avoid and what to seek. When you have learned this, you will find
the answer that makes the need for any differences disappear. Truth comes of its
own will unto its own. When you have learned that you belong to truth, it will
flow lightly over you without a difference of any kind. For you will need no
contrast to help you realize that this is what you want, and only this. Fear not the
Holy Spirit will fail in what your Father has given Him to do. The Will of God
can fail in nothing.
37
262
Guarantee of Heaven
Have faith in only this one thing, and it will be sufficient: God wills you
be in Heaven, and nothing can keep you from it or it from you. Your wildest
misperceptions, your weird imaginings, your blackest nightmares all mean nothing.
They will not prevail against the peace God wills for you. The Holy Spirit will
restore your sanity, because insanity is not the Will of God. If that suffices Him, it
is enough for you.You will not keep what God would have removed, because it
breaks communication with you with whom He would communicate. His voice
will be heard.
42
The Communication Link which God Himself placed within you, joining
your minds with His, cannot be broken.You may believe you want it broken, and
this belief does interfere with the deep peace in which the sweet and constant
communication which God would share with you is known. Yet His channels
of reaching out cannot be wholly closed and separated from Him. Peace will be
yours, because His peace still flows to you from Him Whose Will is peace. You
have it now. The Holy Spirit will teach you how to use it and, by projecting it, to
learn that it is in you.
43
God willed you Heaven and will always will you nothing else. The Holy
Spirit knows only of His Will. There is no chance that Heaven will not be yours,
for God is sure, and what He wills is as sure as He is. You will learn salvation,
because you will learn how to save. It will not be possible to exempt yourself from
what the Holy Spirit wills to teach you. Salvation is as sure as God. His certainty
suffices. Learn that even the darkest nightmare that disturbed the mind of God’s
sleeping Son holds no power over him. He will learn the lesson of awaking. God
watches over him, and light surrounds him.
44
Can God’s Son lose himself in dreams when God has placed within him the
glad call to waken and be glad? He cannot separate himself from what is in him.
His sleep will not withstand the call to wake. The mission of redemption will be
fulfilled as surely as the creation will remain unchanged throughout eternity.You
do not have to know that Heaven is yours to make it so. It is so. Yet the Will of
God must be accepted as your will to know it.
45
The Holy Spirit cannot fail to undo for you everything you have learned
that teaches you what is not true must be reconciled with truth. This is the
reconciliation which the ego would substitute for your reconciliation unto sanity
and unto peace.The Holy Spirit has a very different kind of reconciliation in His
Mind for you, and one which He will effect as surely as the ego will not effect
what it attempts.
46
Failure is of the ego, not of God. From Him you cannot wander, and there is
41
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vii. The
no possibility that the plan the Holy Spirit offers to everyone for the salvation of
everyone will not be perfectly accomplished. You will be released, and you will
not remember anything you made that was not created for you and by you in
return. For how can you remember what was never true or not remember what
has always been? It is this reconciliation with truth, and only truth, in which the
peace of Heaven lies.
vi. The Testimony of
Miracles
Yes, you are blessed indeed. Yet in this world, you do not know it. But you
have the means for learning it and seeing it quite clearly. The Holy Spirit uses
logic as easily and as well, as does the ego, except that His conclusions are not
insane.They take a direction exactly opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the
ego points to darkness and to death. We have followed much of the ego’s logic
and have seen its logical conclusions. And having seen them, we have realized
that they can not be seen but in illusions, for there alone their seeming clearness
seems to be clearly seen. Let us now turn away from them and follow the simple
logic by which the Holy Spirit teaches you the simple conclusions that speak for
truth and only truth.
48
If you are blessed and do not know it, you need to learn it must be so. The
knowledge is not taught, but its conditions must be acquired, for it is they that have
been thrown away. You can learn to bless and cannot give what you have not. If,
then, you offer blessing, it must have come first to yourself. And you must also have
accepted it as yours, for how else could you give it away?
49
That is why your miracles offer you the testimony that you are blessed. If
what you offer is complete forgiveness, you must have let guilt go, accepting the
Atonement for yourself and learning you are guiltless. How could you learn what
has been done for you, but which you do not know, unless you do what you
would have to do if it had been done unto you? Indirect proof of truth is needed
in a world made of denial and without direction.You will perceive the need for
this if you will realize that to deny is the decision not to know. The logic of the
world must therefore lead to nothing, for its goal is nothing.
50
If you decide to have and give and be nothing except a dream, you must direct
your thoughts unto oblivion. And if you have and give and are everything, and all
this has been denied, your thought system is closed off and wholly separated from
the truth. This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of
its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your
dream is sacred to you. That is why God placed the Holy Spirit in you, where
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Happy Learner
you placed the dream.
51
Seeing is always outward. Were your thoughts wholly of you, the thought
system which you made would be forever dark. The thoughts which the mind
of God’s Son projects have all the power that he gives to them. The thoughts he
shares with God are beyond his belief, but those he made are his beliefs. And it is
these, and not the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love. They will not be
taken from him. But they can be given up by him, for the Source of their undoing
is in him.There is nothing in the world to teach him that the logic of the world is
totally insane and leads to nothing.Yet in him who made this insane logic, there
is One Who knows it leads to nothing, for He knows everything.
52
Any direction which will lead you where the Holy Spirit leads you not
goes nowhere. Anything you deny which He knows to be true, you have denied
yourself, and He must therefore teach you not to deny it. Undoing is indirect,
as doing is. You were created only to create, neither to see nor do. These are but
indirect expressions of the will to live, which has been blocked by the capricious
and unholy whim of death and murder that your Father shared not with you.
You have set yourselves the task of sharing what can not be shared. And while
you think it possible to learn to do this, you will not believe all that is possible to
learn to do.
53
The Holy Spirit, therefore, must begin His teaching by showing you what
you can never learn. His message is not indirect, but He must introduce the simple
truth into a thought system which has become so twisted and so complex that
you cannot see that it means nothing. He merely looks at its foundation and
dismisses it. But you who cannot undo what you have made cannot see through
it. It deceives you because you chose to deceive yourselves. Those who choose
to be deceived will merely attack direct approaches, which would seem but to
encroach upon deception and strike at it.
vii. The
Happy Learner
The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner in whom His mission can be happily
accomplished. You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize
that you are miserable and not happy. The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this
contrast, for you believe that misery is happiness. This has so confused you that
you have undertaken to learn to do what you can never do, believing that unless
you learn it, you will not be happy. You do not realize that the foundation on
which this most peculiar learning goal depends means absolutely nothing. It does
make sense to you.
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viii. The
Have faith in nothing, and you will find the “treasure” that you sought. Yet
you will add another burden to your mind, already burdened or you would not
have sought another. You will believe that nothing is of value and will value it. A
little piece of glass, a speck of dust, a body or a war are one to you. For if you
value one thing made of nothing, you have believed that nothing can be precious
and that you can learn how to make the untrue true.
56
The Holy Spirit, seeing where you are but knowing you are elsewhere, begins
His lesson in simplicity with the fundamental teaching that truth is true. This is
the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and in the end the only one. Simplicity is
very difficult for twisted minds. Consider all the distortions you have made of
nothing—all the strange forms and feelings and actions and reactions that you
have woven out of it. Nothing is so alien to you as the simple truth, and nothing
are you less inclined to listen to. The contrast between what is true and what is
not is perfectly apparent, yet you do not see it.
57
The simple and the obvious are not apparent to those who would make
palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden crowns
because of them. All this the Holy Spirit sees and teaches simply that all this is
not true. To these unhappy learners who would teach themselves nothing and
delude themselves into believing that it is not nothing, the Holy Spirit says, with
steadfast quietness:
55
The truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything
beside it is not there. Let Me make the one distinction for you which you
cannot make but need to learn.Your faith in nothing is deceiving you. Offer
your faith to Me, and I will place it gently in the holy place where it belongs.
You will find no deception there but only the simple truth. And you will love
it because you will understand it.
58
Like you, the Holy Spirit did not make truth. Like God, He knows it to be
true. He brings the light of truth into the darkness and lets it shine on you. And
as it shines, your brothers see it, and realizing that this light is not what you have
made, they see in you more than you see.They will be happy learners of the lesson
which this light brings to them because it teaches them release from nothing and
from all the works of nothing. The heavy chains which seem to bind them unto
despair they do not see as nothing until you bring the light to them. And then
they see the chains have disappeared, and so they must have been nothing. And
you will see it with them. Because you taught them gladness and release, they will
become your teachers in release and gladness.
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Decision For Guiltlessness
When you teach anyone that truth is true, you learn it with him. And so you
learn that what seemed hardest was the easiest. Learn to be happy learners. You
will never learn how to make nothing everything.Yet see that this has been your
goal and recognize how foolish it has been. Be glad it is undone, for when you
look at it in simple honesty, it is undone. We said before, “Be not content with
nothing,” for you have believed that nothing could content you. It is not so.
61
If you would be a happy learner, you must give everything that you have
learned over to the Holy Spirit to be unlearned for you. And then begin to learn
the joyous lessons that come quickly on the firm foundation that truth is true.
For what is builded there is true and built on truth. The universe of learning will
open up before you in all its gracious simplicity. With truth before you, you will
not look back.
62
The happy learner meets the conditions of learning here, as he also meets the
conditions of knowledge in the Kingdom. All this lies in the Holy Spirit’s plan
to free you from the past and open up the way to freedom for you. For truth is
true.What else could ever be or ever was? This simple lesson holds the key to the
dark door which you believe is locked forever.You made this door of nothing and
behind it is nothing. The key is only the light which shines away the shapes and
forms and fears of nothing. Accept this key to freedom from the hands of Christ
Who gives it to you that you may join Him in the holy task of bringing light to
darkness. For, like your brothers, you do not realize the light has come and freed
you from the sleep of darkness.
63
Behold your brothers in their freedom and learn of them how to be free of
darkness.The light in you will waken them, and they will not leave you asleep.The
vision of Christ is given the very instant that it is perceived. Where everything
is clear, it is all holy. The quietness of its simplicity is so compelling that you will
realize it is impossible to deny the simple truth. For there is nothing else. God is
everywhere, and His Son is in Him with everything. Can he sing the dirge of
sorrow when this is true?
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viii. The
Learning will be commensurate with motivation, and the interference in
your motivation for learning is exactly the same as that which interferes with
all your thinking. The happy learner cannot feel guilty about learning. This is so
essential to learning that it should never be forgotten. The guiltless learner learns
so easily because his thoughts are free.Yet this entails the recognition that guilt is
interference, not salvation, and serves no useful function at all.
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267
You are accustomed to using guiltlessness merely to offset the pain of guilt and
do not look upon it as having value in itself.You believe that guilt and guiltlessness
are both of value, each representing an escape from what the other does not offer
you.You do not want either alone, for without both, you do not see yourselves as
whole and therefore happy.Yet you are whole only in your guiltlessness, and only
in your guiltlessness can you be happy. There is no conflict here. To wish for guilt
in any way, in any form, will lose appreciation of the value of your guiltlessness
and push it from your sight.
66
There is no compromise that you can make with guilt and escape the pain
which only guiltlessness allays. Learning is living here, as creating is being in
Heaven. Whenever the pain of guilt seems to attract you, remember that, if you
yield to it, you are deciding against your happiness and will not learn how to be
happy. Say therefore to yourself gently, but with the conviction born of the love
of God and of His Son,
65
67
What I experience, I will make manifest.
If I am guiltless, I have nothing to fear.
I choose to testify to my acceptance of the Atonement, not for its rejection.
I would accept my guiltlessness by making it manifest and sharing it.
Let me bring peace to God’s Son from his Father.
Each day, each hour and minute, even every second, you are deciding between
the crucifixion and the resurrection, between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The
ego is the choice for guilt; the Holy Spirit the decision for guiltlessness.The power
of decision is all that is yours. What you can decide between is fixed because there
are no alternatives except truth and illusion. And there is no overlap between
them because they are opposites which cannot be reconciled and cannot both be
true.You are guilty or guiltless, bound or free, happy or unhappy.
69
The miracle teaches you that you have chosen guiltlessness, freedom, and joy.
It is not a cause, but an effect. It is the natural result of choosing right, attesting to
your happiness that comes from choosing to be free of guilt. Everyone you offer
healing to returns it. Everyone you attack keeps it and cherishes it by holding it
against you.Whether he does this or does it not will make no difference; you will
think he does. It is impossible to offer what you do not want without this penalty.
The cost of giving is receiving. Either it is a penalty from which you suffer or the
happy purchase of a treasure to hold dear.
70
No penalty is ever asked of God’s Son except by himself and of himself. Every
chance given him to heal is another opportunity to replace darkness with light
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268
viii. The
and fear with love. If he refuses it, he binds himself to darkness because he did not
choose to free his brother and enter light with him. By giving power to nothing,
he threw away the joyous opportunity to learn that nothing has no power. And
by not dispelling darkness, he became afraid of darkness and of light. The joy of
learning that darkness has no power over the Son of God is the happy lesson the
Holy Spirit teaches and would have you teach with Him. It is His joy to teach it,
as it will be yours.
71
The way to teach this simple lesson is merely this: guiltlessness is invulnerability.
Therefore, make your invulnerability manifest to everyone, and teach him that
whatever he may try to do to you, your perfect freedom from the belief that you
can be harmed shows him he is guiltless. He can do nothing that can hurt you,
and by refusing to allow him to think he can, you teach him that the Atonement,
which you have accepted for yourself, is also his. There is nothing to forgive.
No one can hurt the Son of God. His guilt is wholly without cause, and being
without cause, cannot exist.
72
God is the only Cause, and guilt is not of Him. Teach no one he has hurt
you, for if you do, you teach yourself that what is not of God has power over
you. The causeless cannot be. Do not attest to it, and do not foster belief in it in
any mind. Remember always that mind is one and cause is one. You will learn
communication with this oneness only when you learn to deny the causeless and
accept the Cause of God as yours. The power that God has given to His Son is
his, and nothing else can His Son see or choose to look upon without imposing
on himself the penalty of guilt in place of all the happy teaching the Holy Spirit
would gladly offer him.
73
Whenever you decide to make decisions for yourself, you are thinking
destructively, and the decision will be wrong. It will hurt you because of the
concept of decision which led to it. It is not true that you can make decisions by
yourself or for yourself alone. No thought of God’s Son can be separate or isolated
in its effects. Every decision is made for the whole Sonship, directed in and out
and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of. Those
who accept the Atonement are invulnerable. But those who believe they are
guilty will respond to guilt because they think it is salvation and will not refuse to
see it and side with it. And they will fail to understand the simple fact that what
they do not want must hurt them.
74
All this arises because they do not believe that what they want is good.Yet will
was given them because it is holy and will bring to them all that they need, coming
as naturally as peace that knows no limits. There is nothing their wills will not
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viii. The
provide that offers them anything of value. Yet because they do not understand
their will, the Holy Spirit quietly understands it for them and gives them what
they will without effort, strain, or the impossible burden of deciding what they
want and need alone.
75
It will never happen that you will have to make decisions for yourself. You
are not bereft of help, and Help that knows the answer. Would you be content
with little, which is all that you alone can offer yourself, when He Who gives you
everything will simply offer it to you? He will never ask what you have done to
make you worthy of the gift of God. Ask it not therefore of yourselves. Instead,
accept His answer, for He knows that you are worthy of everything God wills
for you. Do not try to escape the gift of God which He so freely and so gladly
offers you. He offers you but what God gave Him for you.You need not decide
whether or not you are deserving of it. God knows you are.
76
Would you deny the truth of God’s decision and place your pitiful appraisal
of yourself in place of His calm and unswerving value of His Son? Nothing can
shake God’s conviction of the perfect purity of everything that He created, for
it is wholly pure. Do not decide against it, for being of Him, it must be true.
Peace abides in every mind that quietly accepts the plan which God has set for
his Atonement, relinquishing his own.You know not of salvation, for you do not
understand it. Make no decisions about what it is or where it lies, but ask of the
Holy Spirit everything and leave all decisions to His gentle counsel.
77
The One Who knows the plan of God which God would have you follow
can teach you what it is. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow
it. Every decision you undertake alone but signifies that you would define what
salvation is and what you would be saved from. The Holy Spirit knows that all
salvation is escape from guilt.You have no other “enemy,” and against this strange
distortion of the purity of the Son of God, the Holy Spirit is your only friend.
He is the strong protector of your innocence, which sets you free. And it is
His decision to undo everything that would obscure your innocence from your
unclouded mind.
78
Let Him, therefore, be the only Guide that you would follow to salvation. He
knows the way and leads you gladly on it. With Him you will not fail to learn
what God wills for you is your will. Without His guidance, you will think you
know alone and will decide against your peace as surely as you made the wrong
decision in ever thinking that salvation lay in you alone. Salvation is of Him to
Whom God gave it for you. He has not forgotten it. Forget Him not, and He will
make every decision for you, for your salvation, and the peace of God in you.
270
Seek not to appraise the worth of God’s Son, whom He created holy, for
to do so is to evaluate his Father and judge against Him. And you will feel guilty
for this imagined crime, which no one in this world or Heaven could possibly
commit. God’s Spirit teaches only that the “sin” of self-replacement on the throne
of God is not a source of guilt. What cannot happen can have no effects to fear.
Be quiet in your faith in Him Who loves you and would lead you out of insanity.
Madness may be your choice, but not your reality. Never forget the love of God,
Who has remembered you. For it is quite impossible that He could ever let His
Son drop from His loving Mind wherein he was created and where his abode was
fixed in perfect peace forever.
80
Say to the Holy Spirit only, “Decide for me,” and it is done. For His decisions
are reflections of what God knows about you, and in this light, error of any kind
becomes impossible. Why would you struggle so frantically to anticipate all that
you cannot know when all knowledge lies behind every decision which the Holy
Spirit makes for you? Learn of His wisdom and His love and teach His answer to
everyone who struggles in the dark. For you decide for them and for yourself.
81
How gracious is it to decide all things through Him Whose equal love is
given equally to all alike! He leaves you no one outside yourself, alone without you.
And so He gives you what is yours because your Father would have you share
it with Him. In everything be led by Him and do not reconsider. Trust Him to
answer quickly, surely, and with love for everyone who will be touched in any
way by the decision. And everyone will be.Would you take unto yourself the sole
responsibility for deciding what can bring only good to everyone? Would you
know this?
82
You taught yourselves the most unnatural habit of not communicating with
your Creator. Yet you remain in close communication with Him and with
everything that is within Him, as it is within yourself. Unlearn isolation through
His loving guidance and learn of all the happy communication that you have
thrown away but could not lose.
83
Whenever you are in doubt what you should do, think of His Presence in
you and tell yourself this and only this:
79
84
He leadeth me and knows the way, which I know not.
Yet He will never keep from me what He would have me learn.
And so I trust Him to communicate to me all that He knows for me
Then let Him teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness, which is
already there.
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ix. The Way of
Salvation
When you accept a brother’s guiltlessness, you will see the Atonement in
him. For by proclaiming it in him, you make it yours, and you will see what you
sought.You will not see the symbol of your brother’s guiltlessness shining within
him while you still believe it is not there. His guiltlessness is your Atonement.
Grant it to him, and you will see the truth of what you have acknowledged.Yet
truth is offered first to be received, even as God gave it first to His Son. The first
in time means nothing, but the First in eternity is God the Father, Who is both
First and One. Beyond the First, there is no other, for there is no order, no second
or third and nothing but the First.
87
You who belong to the First Cause, created by Him like unto Himself and
part of Him, are more than merely guiltless. The state of guiltlessness is only the
condition in which what is not there has been removed from the disordered
mind that thought it was. This state, and only this, must you attain with God
beside you. For until you do, you will still think that you are separate from Him.
You can feel His Presence next to you but cannot know that you are one with
Him. This need not be taught. Learning applies only to the condition in which
it happens of itself.
88
When you have let all that obscured the truth in your most holy mind be
undone for you and stand in grace before your Father, He will give Himself
to you as He has always done. Giving Himself is all He knows, and so it is all
knowledge. For what He knows not cannot be and therefore cannot be given. Ask
not to be forgiven, for this has already been accomplished. Ask, rather, to learn
how to forgive and restore what always was to your unforgiving mind. Atonement
becomes real and visible to them that use it. On earth this is your only function,
and you must learn that it is all you want to learn.
89
You will feel guilty till you learn this. For in the end, whatever form it takes,
your guilt arises from your failure to fulfill your function in God’s Mind with all
of yours. Can you escape this guilt by failing to fulfill your function here? You need
not understand creation to do what must be done before that knowledge would
be meaningful to you. God breaks no barriers; neither did He make them. When
you release them, they are gone. God will not fail nor ever has in anything.
90
Decide that God is right and you are wrong about yourself. He created you
out of Himself but still within Him. He knows what you are. Remember that there
is no second to Him. There cannot, therefore, be anyone without His Holiness
nor anyone unworthy of His perfect Love. Fail not in your function of loving in
a loveless place made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deceit
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ix. The Way of
Salvation
undone. Fail not yourself, but instead offer to God and you His blameless Son. For
this small gift of appreciation for His Love, God will Himself exchange your gift
for His.
91
Before you make any decisions for yourself, remember that you have decided
against your function in Heaven and consider carefully whether you want to
make decisions here. Your function here is only to decide against deciding what
you want in recognition that you do not know. How, then, can you decide what
you should do? Leave all decisions to the One Who speaks for God and for your
function as He knows it. So will He teach you to remove the awful burden you
have laid upon yourself by loving not the Son of God and trying to teach him
guilt instead of love. Give up this frantic and insane attempt, which cheats you of
the joy of living with your God and Father, and awaking gladly to His love and
holiness, which join together as the truth in you, making you one with Him.
92
When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as
easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as
if you were being carried along a quiet path in summer. Only your own volition
seems to make deciding hard. The Holy Spirit will not delay at all in answering
your every question what to do. He knows. And He will tell you and then do it for
you.You who are tired might consider whether this is not more restful than sleep.
For you can bring your guilt into sleeping but not into this.
273
ii. Guilt and
ii.
Guilt
and
Guiltlessness
Guiltlessness
The guiltless and the guilty are totally incapable of understanding one another.
Each perceives the other as like himself, making them unable to communicate
because each sees the other unlike the way he sees himself. God can communicate
only to the Holy Spirit in your mind because only He shares the knowledge of
what you are with God. And only the Holy Spirit can answer God for you, for
only He knows what God is. Everything else that you have placed within your
mind cannot exist, for what is not in communication with the Mind of God has
never been. Communication with God is life. Nothing without it is at all.
5
The only part of your mind that has reality is the part which links you still
with God. Would you have all of it transformed into a radiant message of God’s
Love, to share with all the lonely ones who denied Him with you? God makes this
possible. Would you deny His yearning to be known? You yearn for Him, as He
for you. This is forever changeless. Accept, then, the immutable. Leave the world
of death behind, and return quietly to Heaven. There is nothing of value here and
everything of value there. Listen to the Holy Spirit and to God through Him. He
speaks of you to you.There is no guilt in you, for God is blessed in His Son as the
Son is blessed in Him.
6
Each one of you has a special part to play in the Atonement, but the message
given to each to share is always the same—God’s Son is guiltless. Each one teaches
the message differently and learns it differently.Yet until he teaches it and learns it,
he will suffer the pain of dim awareness that his true function remains unfulfilled
in him. The burden of guilt is heavy, but God would not have you bound by it.
His plan for your awaking is as perfect as yours is fallible.You know not what you
do, but He Who knows is with you. His gentleness is yours, and all the love you
share with God He holds in trust for you. He would teach you nothing except
how to be happy.
7
Blessed Son of a wholly blessing Father, joy was created for you. Who can
condemn whom God has blessed? There is nothing in the Mind of God that
does not share His shining innocence. Creation is the natural extension of perfect
purity.Your only calling here is to devote yourself with active willingness to the
denial of guilt in all its forms. To accuse is not to understand. The happy learners
of the Atonement become the teachers of the innocence that is the right of all
that God created. Deny them not what is their due, for you will not withhold it
from them alone.
8
The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God’s Son, given him in
his creation. Do not try to steal it from him, or you will ask for guilt and will
4
fourteen
Bringing Illusions to Truth
i.
U
Introduction
nless you are guiltless, you cannot know God, Whose Will is that you
know Him. Therefore, you must be guiltless. Yet if you do not accept
the necessary conditions for knowing Him, you have denied Him and do not
recognize Him, though He is all around you. He cannot be known without His
Son, whose guiltlessness is the condition for knowing Him. Accepting His Son
as guilty is denial of the Father so complete that knowledge is swept away from
recognition in the very mind where God Himself has placed it. If you would but
listen and learn how impossible this is! Do not endow Him with attributes You
understand.You made Him not, and anything you understand is not of Him.
14:2
Your task is not to make reality. It is here without your making, but not
without you. You who have thrown your selves away and valued God so little,
hear me speak for Him and for yourselves. You cannot understand how much
your Father loves you, for there is no parallel in your experience of the world to
help you understand it.There is nothing on earth with which it can compare and
nothing you have ever felt, apart from Him, that resembles it every so faintly.You
cannot even give a blessing in perfect gentleness. Would you know of One Who
gives forever and Who knows of nothing except giving?
3
The Children of Heaven live in the light of the blessing of their Father
because they know that they are sinless. The Atonement was established as the
means of restoring guiltlessness to the mind which has denied it and thus denied
Heaven to Itself. Atonement teaches you the true condition of the Son of God.
It does not teach you what you are or what your Father is.The Holy Spirit,Who
remembers this for you, merely teaches you how to remove the blocks that stand
between you and what you know. His memory is yours. If you remember what
you have made, you are remembering nothing. Remembrance of reality is in Him
and therefore in you.
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iii. Out of the
Chapter 14: BRINGING ILLUSIONS TO TRUTH
experience it. Protect his purity from every thought that would steal it away
and keep it from his sight. Bring innocence to light in answer to the call of the
Atonement. Never allow purity to remain hidden, but shine away the heavy veils
of guilt within which the Son of God has hidden himself from his own sight. We
are all joined in the Atonement here, and nothing else can unite us in this world.
So will the world of separation slip away and full communication be restored
between the Father and the Son.
9
The miracle acknowledges the guiltlessness which must have been denied to
produce need of healing. Do not withhold this glad acknowledgment, for hope
of happiness and release from suffering of every kind lie in it. Who is there but
wishes to be free of pain? He may not yet have learned how to exchange his guilt
for innocence nor realize that only in this exchange can freedom from pain be
his. Yet those who have failed to learn need teaching, not attack. To attack those
who have need of teaching is to fail to learn from them.
10
Teachers of innocence, each in his own way, have joined together, taking
their part in the unified curriculum of the Atonement. There is no unity of
learning goals apart from this. There is no conflict in this curriculum, which has
one aim however it is taught. Each effort made on its behalf is offered for the
single purpose of release from guilt to the eternal glory of God and His creation.
And every teaching that points to this points straight to Heaven and to the peace
of God. There is no pain, no trial, no fear that teaching this can fail to overcome.
The power of God Himself supports this teaching and guarantees its limitless
results.
11
Join your own efforts to the power that cannot fail and must result in peace.
No one can be untouched by teaching such as this. You will not see yourself
beyond the power of God if you teach only this. You will not be exempt from
the effects of this most holy lesson, which seeks but to restore what is the right
of God’s creation. From everyone whom you accord release from guilt, you will
inevitably learn your innocence. The circle of Atonement has no end. And you
will find ever-increasing confidence in your safe inclusion in what is for all in
everyone you bring within its safety and its perfect peace.
12
Peace, then, be unto everyone who becomes a teacher of peace. For peace is
the acknowledgment of perfect purity from which no one is excluded.Within its
holy circle is everyone whom God created as His Son. Joy is its unifying attribute,
with no one left outside to suffer guilt alone. The power of God draws everyone
to its safe embrace of love and union. Stand quietly within this circle and attract
all tortured minds to join with you in the safety of its peace and holiness. Abide
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Darkness
with me within it as teachers of Atonement, not of guilt.
13
Blessed are you who teach with me. Our power comes not of us but of our
Father. In guiltlessness we know Him, as He knows us guiltless. I stand within
the circle, calling you to peace. Teach peace with me and stand with me on
holy ground. Remember for everyone your Father’s power that He has given
him. Believe not that you cannot teach His perfect peace. Stand not outside but
join with me within. Fail not the only purpose to which my teaching calls you.
Restore to God His Son as He created him by teaching him his innocence.
14
The crucifixion has no part in the Atonement. Only the resurrection became
my part in it. That is the symbol of the release from guilt by guiltlessness. Whom
you perceive as guilty, you would crucify.Yet you restore guiltlessness to whomever
you see as guiltless. Crucifixion is always the ego’s aim. It sees as guilty, and by
its condemnation, it would kill. The Holy Spirit sees only guiltlessness, and in
His gentleness, He would release from fear and reestablish the reign of love. The
power of love is in His gentleness, which is of God and therefore cannot crucify
nor suffer crucifixion.The temple you restore becomes your altar, for it was rebuilt
through you. And everything you give to God is yours.Thus He creates, and thus
must you restore.
15
Each one you see you place within the holy circle of Atonement or leave
outside, judging him fit for crucifixion or for redemption. If you bring him
into the circle of purity, you will rest there with him. If you leave him without,
you join him there. Judge not except in quietness which is not of you. Refuse
to accept anyone as without the blessing of Atonement, and bring him into it by
blessing him. Holiness must be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it
holy. Come gladly to the holy circle, and look out in peace on all who think they
are outside. Cast no one out, for this is what he seeks, along with you. Come, let
us join him in the holy place of peace, which is for all of us, united as one within
the cause of peace.
iii.
Out
of the
Darkness
The journey that we undertake together is the exchange of dark for light,
of ignorance for understanding. Nothing you understand is fearful. It is only in
darkness and in ignorance that you perceive the frightening, and you shrink away
from it to further darkness. And yet it is only the hidden that can terrify, not for
what it is, but for its hiddenness. The obscure is frightening because you do not
understand its meaning. If you did, it would be clear, and you would be no longer
in the dark. Nothing has hidden value, for what is hidden cannot be shared, and
16
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iv. Perception Without
so its value is unknown. The hidden is kept apart, but value always lies in joint
appreciation. What is concealed cannot be loved, and so it must be feared.
17
The quiet light in which the Holy Spirit dwells within you is merely perfect
openness in which nothing is hidden and therefore nothing is fearful. Attack
will always yield to love if it is brought to love, not hidden from it. There is no
darkness that the light of love will not dispel, unless it is concealed from love’s
beneficence. What is kept apart from love cannot share its healing power, because
it has been separated off and kept in darkness. The sentinels of darkness watch
over it carefully, and you who made these guardians of illusion out of nothing are
now afraid of them.
18
Would you continue to give imagined power to these strange ideas of safety?
They are neither safe nor unsafe. They do not protect; neither do they attack.
They do nothing at all, being nothing at all. As guardians of darkness and of
ignorance, look to them only for fear, for what they keep obscure is fearful. But
let them go, and what was fearful will be so no longer. Without protection of
obscurity, only the light of love remains, for only this has meaning and can live in
light. Everything else must disappear.
19
Death yields to life simply because destruction is not true. The light of
guiltlessness shines guilt away because, when they are brought together, the truth
of one must make the falsity of its opposite perfectly clear. Keep not guilt and
guiltlessness apart, for your belief that you can have them both is meaningless. All
you have done by keeping them apart is lose their meaning by confusing them
with each other. And so you do not realize that only one means anything, and the
other is wholly without sense of any kind.
20
You have interpreted the separation as a means which you have made for
breaking your communication with your Father. The Holy Spirit reinterprets it
as a means of reestablishing what has not been broken but has been made obscure.
All things you made have use to Him for His most holy purpose. He knows you
are not separate from God, but He perceives much in your mind that lets you
think you are. All this, and nothing else, would He separate from you. The power
of decision, which you made in place of the power of creation, He would teach
you how to use on your behalf. You who made it to crucify yourselves must learn
of Him how to apply it to the holy cause of restoration.
21
You who speak in dark and devious symbols do not understand the language
you have made. It has no meaning, for its purpose is not communication, but rather
the disruption of communication. If the purpose of language is communication,
how can this tongue mean anything? Yet even this strange and twisted effort
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Deceit
to communicate through not communicating holds enough of love to make it
meaningful if its interpreter is not its maker.You who made it are but expressing
conflict, from which the Holy Spirit would release you. Leave what you would
communicate to Him. He will interpret it to you with perfect clarity, for He
knows with Whom you are in perfect communication.
22
You know not what you say, and so you know not what is said to you.
Yet your Interpreter perceives the meaning in your alien language. He will not
attempt to communicate the meaningless. But He will separate out all that has
meaning, dropping off the rest and offering your true communication to those
who would communicate as truly with you. You speak two languages at once,
and this must lead to unintelligibility. Yet if one means nothing and the other
everything, only that one is possible for purposes of communication. The other
but interferes with it.
23
The Holy Spirit’s function is entirely communication. He therefore must
remove whatever interferes with it in order to restore it.Therefore, keep no source
of interference from His sight, for He will not attack your sentinels. But bring
them to Him, and let His gentleness teach you that in the light they are not
fearful and cannot serve to guard the dark doors behind which nothing at all is
carefully concealed. We must open all doors and let the light come streaming
through. There are no hidden chambers in God’s temple. Its gates are open wide
to greet His Son. No one can fail to come where God has called him if he close
not the door himself upon his Father’s welcome.
iv.
Perception Without Deceit
What do you want? Light or darkness, knowledge or ignorance are yours,
but not both. Opposites must be brought together and not kept apart. For their
separation is only in your mind, and they are reconciled by union, as you are. In
union, everything that is not real must disappear, for truth is union. As darkness
disappears in light, so ignorance fades away when knowledge dawns. Perception
is the medium by which ignorance is brought to knowledge.Yet the perception
must be without deceit, for otherwise it becomes the messenger of ignorance
rather than a helper in the search for truth.
25
The search for truth is but the honest searching out of everything that
interferes with truth. Truth is. It can be neither lost nor sought nor found. It is
there, wherever you are, being within you.Yet it can be recognized or unrecognized,
real or false to you. If you hide it, it becomes unreal to you because you hid it and
surrounded it with fear. Under each cornerstone of fear on which you have
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erected your insane system of belief, the truth lies hidden.Yet you cannot know
this, for by hiding truth in fear, you see no reason to believe the more you look at
fear, the less you see it, and the clearer what it conceals becomes.
26
It is not possible to convince the unknowing that they know. From their point
of view, it is not true.Yet it is true because God knows it.These are clearly opposite
viewpoints of what the “unknowing” are. To God unknowing is impossible. It is
therefore not a point of view at all but merely a belief in something that does
not exist. It is only this belief that the unknowing have, and by it they are wrong
about themselves. They have defined themselves as they were not created. Their
creation was not a point of view, but rather a certainty. Uncertainty brought to
certainty does not retain any conviction of reality.
27
You must have noticed that the emphasis has been on bringing what is
undesirable to the desirable; what you do not want to what you do. You will
realize that salvation must come to you this way if you consider what dissociation
is. Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking whereby two systems of belief
which cannot coexist are both maintained. It has been recognized that if they were
brought together their joint acceptance would become impossible. But if one is
kept in darkness from the other, their separation seems to keep them both alive
and equal in their reality.Their joining thus becomes the source of fear, for if they
meet, acceptance must be withdrawn from one of them.
28
You cannot have them both, for each denies the other. Apart, this fact is
lost from sight, for each in a separate place can be endowed with firm belief.
Bring them together, and the fact of their complete incompatibility is instantly
apparent. One will go because the other is seen in the same place. Light cannot
enter darkness when a mind believes in darkness and will not let it go. Truth
does not struggle against ignorance, and love does not attack fear. What needs no
protection does not defend itself. Defense is of your making. God knows it not.
The Holy Spirit uses defenses on behalf of truth only because you made them
against it. His perception of them, according to His purpose, merely changes them
into a call for what you have attacked with them.
29
Defenses, like everything you made, must be gently turned to your own
good, translated by the Holy Spirit from means of self-destruction to means of
preservation and release. His task is mighty, but the power of God is with Him.
Therefore, to Him it is so easy that it was accomplished the instant it was given
Him for you. Do not delay yourselves in your return to peace by wondering how
He can fulfill what God has given Him to do. Leave that to Him Who knows.You
are not asked to do mighty tasks yourself.You are merely asked to do the little He
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iv. Perception Without
Deceit
suggests you do, trusting Him only to the small extent of believing that if He asks
it, you can do it.You will see how easily all that He asks can be accomplished.
30
The Holy Spirit asks of you but this—bring to Him every secret you have
locked away from Him. Open every door to Him and bid Him enter the darkness
and lighten it away. At your request He enters gladly. He brings the light to
darkness if you make the darkness open to Him. But what you hide He cannot
look upon. For He sees for you, and unless you look with Him, He cannot see.The
vision of Christ is not for Him alone but for Him with you. Bring, therefore, all
your dark and secret thoughts to Him and look upon them with Him. He holds
the light, and you the darkness. They cannot coexist when both of you together
look on them. His judgment must prevail, and He will give it to you as you join
your perception to His. Joining with Him in seeing is the way in which you learn
to share with Him the interpretation of perception that leads to knowledge.
31
You cannot see alone. Sharing perception with Him Whom God has given
you teaches you how to recognize what you see. It is the recognition that nothing
you see means anything alone. Seeing with Him will show you that all meaning,
including yours, comes not from double vision but from the gentle fusing of
everything into one meaning, one emotion, and one purpose. God has one purpose
which He shares with you. The single vision which the Holy Spirit offers you
will bring this oneness to your mind with clarity and brightness so intense you
could not wish for all the world not to accept what God would have you have.
Behold your will, accepting it as His, with all His love as yours. All honor to you
through Him, and through Him unto God.
32
In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave you and the power
He bestowed upon His guiltless Son. All this lies hidden in every darkened place
shrouded in guilt and in the dark denial of innocence. Behind the dark doors
which you have closed lies nothing, because nothing can obscure the gift of God.
It is the closing of the doors that interferes with recognition of the power of God
that shines in you. Banish not power from your mind, but let all that would hide
your glory be brought to the judgment of the Holy Spirit and there undone.
Whom He would save for glory is saved for it. He has promised the Father
that through Him you would be released from littleness to glory. To what He
promised God He is wholly faithful, for He shared with God the promise that
was given Him to share with you.
33
He shares it still, for you. Everything that promises otherwise, great or small,
however much or little valued, He will replace with the one promise given unto
Him to lay upon the altar to your Father and His Son. No altar stands to God
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v. The
without His Son. And nothing brought there that is not equally worthy of both
but will be replaced by gifts wholly acceptable to Father and to Son. Can you
offer guilt to God? You cannot, then, offer it to His Son. For they are not apart,
and gifts to one are offered to the other.
34
You know not God because you know not this. And yet you do know God
and also this. All this is safe within you, where the Holy Spirit shines. He shines
not in division, but in the meeting place where God, united with His Son, speaks
to His Son through Him. Communication between what cannot be divided
cannot cease. The holy meeting place of the unseparated Father and His Son lies
in the Holy Spirit and in you. All interference in the communication that God
Himself wills with His Son is quite impossible here. Unbroken and uninterrupted
love flows constantly between the Father and the Son, as both would have it be.
And so it is.
35
Let your minds wander not through darkened corridors, away from light’s
center. You may choose to lead yourselves astray, but you can only be brought
together by the Guide appointed for you. He will surely lead you to where God
and His Son await your recognition. They are joined in giving you the gift of
oneness, before which all separation vanishes. Unite with what you are. You cannot
join with anything except reality. God’s glory and His Son’s belong to you in
truth. They have no opposite, and nothing else can you bestow upon yourselves.
36
There is no substitute for truth. And truth will make this plain to you as you
are brought into the place where you must meet with truth. And there you must
be led, through gentle understanding which can lead you nowhere else. Where
God is, there are you. Such is the truth. Nothing can change the knowledge given
you by God into unknowingness. Everything God created knows its Creator. For
this is how creation is accomplished by the Creator and by His creations. In the
holy meeting place are joined the Father and His creations, and the creations of
His Son with them together. There is one link which joins them all together,
holding them in the oneness out of which creation happens.
37
The link with which the Father joins Himself to those He gives the power to
create like Him can never be dissolved. Heaven itself is union with all of creation
and with its One Creator. And Heaven remains the Will of God for you. Lay
no gifts other than this upon your altars, for nothing can coexist beside it. Here
your meager offerings are brought together with the gift of God, and only what
is worthy of the Father will be accepted by the Son, for whom it was intended.
To whom God gives Himself, He is given.Your little gifts will vanish on the altar
where He has placed His Own.
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v. The
Recognition
of
Recognition of Holiness
Holiness
The Atonement does not make holy. You were created holy. It merely brings
unholiness to holiness, or what you made to what you are. The bringing together
of truth and illusion, of the ego to God, is the Holy Spirit’s only function. Keep
not your making from your Father, for hiding it has cost you knowledge of Him
and of yourselves. The knowledge is safe, but wherein is your safety apart from it?
The making of time to take the place of timelessness lay in the decision to be not
as you were. Thus, truth was made past, and the present was dedicated to illusion.
And the past, too, was changed and interposed between what always was and now.
The past which you remember never was and represents only the denial of what
always was.
39
Bringing the ego to God is but to bring error to truth, where it stands
corrected because it is the opposite of what it meets and is undone, because the
contradiction can no longer stand. How long can contradiction stand when its
impossible nature is clearly revealed? What disappears in light is not attacked. It
merely vanishes because it is not true. Different realities are meaningless, for reality
must be one. It cannot change with time or mood or chance. Its changelessness
is what makes it real. This cannot be undone. Undoing is for unreality. And this
reality will do for you.
40
Merely by being what it is does truth release you from everything that it is
not. The Atonement is so gentle you need but whisper to it, and all its power will
rush to your assistance and support. You are not frail with God beside you. Yet
without Him you are nothing. The Atonement offers you God. The gift which
you refused is held by Him in you. His Spirit holds it there for you. God has not
left His altar, though His worshiper placed other gods upon it. The temple still is
holy, for the Presence that dwells within it is holiness.
41
In the temple holiness waits quietly for the return of them that love it. The
Presence knows they will return to purity and to grace. The graciousness of
God will take them gently in and cover all their sense of pain and loss with the
immortal assurance of their Father’s Love. There, fear of death will be replaced
with joy of living. For God is Life, and they abide in Life.The Presence of holiness
lives in everything that lives, for holiness created life and leaves not what It created
holy as Itself.
42
In this world you can become a spotless mirror in which the holiness of your
Creator shines forth from you to all around you.You can reflect Heaven here.Yet
no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold
God’s reflection in it. earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego.You need
38
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vi. The
but leave the mirror clean and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have
drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection of
Himself can be perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness they
are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations rather
than in themselves.
43
The reflection of God needs no interpretation. It is clear. Clean but the mirror,
and the message which shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone
to see no one can fail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is
holding to the mirror that is in him. He recognizes it because he has been taught
his need for it but knows not where to look to find it. Let him, then, see it in you
and share it with you.
44
Could you but realize for a single instant the power of healing that the
reflection of God, shining in you, can bring to all the world, you could not wait
to make the mirror of your mind clean to receive the image of the holiness that
heals the world. The image of holiness which shines in your mind is not obscure
and will not change. Its meaning to those who look upon it is not obscure, for
everyone perceives it as the same. All bring their different problems to its healing
light, but all their problems are met only with healing there.
45
The response of holiness to any form of error is always the same. There is
no contradiction in what holiness calls forth. Its one response is healing, without
regard for what is brought to it. Those who have learned to offer only healing
because of the reflection of holiness in them are ready at last for Heaven. There,
holiness is not a reflection but rather the actual condition of what was but reflected
to them here. God is no image, and His creations, as part of Him, hold Him in
them in truth. They do not merely reflect truth, for they are truth.
vi. The
Shift
to
Miracles
When no perception stands between God and His creations, or between His
Children and their own, the knowledge of creation must continue forever. The
reflections which you accept into the mirror of your minds in time but bring
eternity nearer or farther. But eternity itself is beyond all time. Reach out of time
and touch it, with the help of its reflection in you. And you will turn from time
to holiness as surely as the reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt
aside. Reflect the peace of Heaven here and bring this world to Heaven. For the
reflection of truth draws everyone to truth, and as they enter into it, they leave
all reflections behind.
46
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Shift to Miracles
In Heaven reality is shared and not reflected. By sharing its reflection
here, its truth becomes the only perception the Son of God accepts. And thus,
remembrance of his Father dawns on him, and he can no longer be satisfied with
anything but his own reality. You on earth have no conception of limitlessness,
for the world you seem to live in is a world of limits. In this world, it is not true
that anything without order of difficulty can occur. The miracle, therefore, has a
unique function and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of
another world to this one.The miracle is the one thing you can do that transcends
order, being based not on differences but on equality.
48
Miracles are not in competition, and the number of them that you can do is
limitless.They can be simultaneous and legion.This is not difficult to understand,
once you conceive of them as possible at all.What is more difficult to grasp is the
lack of order of difficulty which stamps the miracle as something that must come
from elsewhere, not from here. From the world’s viewpoint, this is impossible.
You have experienced lack of competition among your thoughts, which, even
though they may conflict, can occur to you together and in great numbers.You
are so used to this that it can cause you little surprise.
49
Yet you are also used to classifying some of your thoughts as more important,
larger or better, wiser or more productive and valuable than others. And this is
true about the thoughts which cross the mind of those who think they live apart.
For some are reflections of Heaven, while others are motivated by the ego, which
but seems to think. The result is a weaving, changing pattern which never rests
and is never still. It shifts unceasingly across the mirror of your mind, and the
reflections of Heaven last but a moment and grow dim as darkness blots them
out. Where there was light, darkness removes it in an instant, and alternating
patterns of light and darkness sweep constantly across your minds.
50
The little sanity which still remains is held together by a sense of order which
you establish.Yet the very fact that you can do this and bring any order into chaos
shows you that you are not an ego and that more than an ego must be in you. For
the ego is chaos, and if it were all of you, no order at all would be possible. Yet
though the order which you impose upon your minds limits the ego, it also limits
you.To order is to judge and to arrange by judgment. It will seem difficult for you
to learn that you have no basis at all for ordering your thoughts. This lesson the
Holy Spirit teaches by giving you shining examples to show you that your way
of ordering is wrong, but that a better way is offered you.
51
The miracle offers exactly the same response to every call for help. It does
not judge the call. It merely recognizes what it is and answers accordingly. It does
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vii. The Test of Truth
not consider which call is louder or greater or more important.You may wonder
how you who are still bound to judgment can be asked to do that which requires
no judgment of your own. The answer is very simple. The power of God, and not
of you, engenders miracles. The miracle itself is but the witness that you have the
power of God in you. That is the reason why the miracle gives equal blessing to
all who share in it, and that is also why everyone shares in it. The power of God is
limitless. And being always maximal, it offers everything to every call from anyone.
There is no order of difficulty here. A call for help is given help.
52
The only judgment involved at all is the Holy Spirit’s one division into two
categories—one of love and the other the call for love. You cannot safely make
this division, for you are much too confused either to recognize love or to believe
that everything else is nothing but a need for love.You are too bound to form and
not to content.What you consider content is not content at all. It is merely form,
and nothing else. For you do not respond to what a brother really offers you, but
only to the particular perception of his offering by which the ego judges it.
53
The ego is incapable of understanding content and is totally unconcerned
with it. To the ego, if the form is acceptable, the content must be. Otherwise, it
will attack the form.You who believe you understand something of the dynamics
of the mind, let me assure you that you know nothing of it at all. For of yourselves
you could not know of it. The study of the ego is not the study of the mind. In
fact, the ego enjoys the study of itself and thoroughly approves the undertakings
of students who would analyze it, approving its importance. Yet they but study
form with meaningless content. For their teacher is senseless, though careful to
conceal this fact behind a lot of words which sound impressive but which lack
any consistent sense when they are put together.
54
This is characteristic of the ego’s judgments. Separately, they seem to hold,
but put them together and the system of thought which arises from joining
them is incoherent and utterly chaotic. For form is not enough for meaning, and
the underlying lack of content makes a cohesive system impossible. Separation
therefore remains the ego’s chosen condition. For no one alone can judge the
ego truly. Yet when two or more join together in searching for truth, the ego can
no longer defend its lack of content. The fact of union tells them it is not true.
55
It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone. For remembering Him
means you are not alone and willing to remember it.Take no thought for yourself,
for no thought you hold is for yourself. If you would remember your Father, let
the Holy Spirit order your thoughts and give only the answer with which He
answers you. Everyone seeks for love as you do and knows it not unless he joins
286
with you in seeking it. If you undertake the search together, you bring with you
a light so powerful that what you see is given meaning. The lonely journey fails
because it has excluded what it would find.
56
As God communicates to the Holy Spirit in you, so does the Holy Spirit
translate His communications through you so you can understand them. God has
no secret communications, for everything of Him is perfectly open and freely
accessible to all, being for all. Nothing lives in secret, and what you would hide
from the Holy Spirit is nothing. Every interpretation you would lay upon a
brother is senseless. Let the Holy Spirit show him to you and teach you both his
love and need for love. Neither his mind nor yours holds more than these two
orders of thought.
57
The miracle is the recognition that this is true. Where there is love, your
brother must give it to you because of what it is. But where there is need for love,
you must give it because of what you are. Long ago we said this course will teach
you what you are, restoring to you your identity.We have already learned that this
identity is shared.The miracle becomes the means of sharing it. By supplying your
identity wherever it is not recognized, you will recognize it. And God Himself,
Who wills to be with His Son forever, will bless each recognition of His Son
with all the love He holds for him. Nor will the power of all His love be absent
from any miracle you offer to His Son. How, then, can there be any order of
difficulty among them?
Yet the essential thing is learning that you do not know. Knowledge is power,
and all power is of God. You who have tried to keep power for yourselves have
lost it.You still have the power, but you have interposed so much between it and
your awareness of it that you cannot use it. Everything you have taught yourselves
has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not what it is
nor where.You have made a semblance of power and a show of strength so pitiful
that it must fail you. For power is not a seeming strength, and truth is beyond
semblance of any kind.Yet all that stands between you and the power of God in
you is but your learning of the false and your attempts to undo the true.
59
Be willing, then, for all of it to be undone, and be glad that you are not
bound to it forever. For you have taught yourselves how to imprison the Son of
God, a lesson so unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest sleep, could even
dream of it. Can God learn how not to be God? And can His Son, given all power
by Him, learn to be powerless? What have you taught yourselves that you can
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possibly prefer to keep in place of what you have and what you are?
60
Atonement teaches you how to escape forever from everything that you have
taught yourselves in the past by showing you only what you are now. Learning has
been accomplished before its effects are manifest. Learning is therefore in the past,
but its influence determines the present by giving it whatever meaning it holds
for you. Your learning gives the present no meaning at all. Nothing you have
ever learned can help you understand the present or teach you how to undo the
past.Your past is what you have taught yourselves. Let it all go. Do not attempt to
understand any event or anything or anyone in its light, for the light of darkness
by which you try to see can only obscure.
61
Put no confidence at all in darkness to illuminate your understanding, for
if you do, you contradict the light and thereby think you see the darkness. Yet
darkness cannot be seen, for it is nothing more than a condition in which seeing
becomes impossible.You who have not yet brought all of the darkness you have
taught yourselves unto the light in you can hardly judge the truth and value of
this course. Yet God did not abandon you. And so you have another lesson sent
from Him, already learned for every Child of light by Him to Whom God gave
it. This lesson shines with God’s glory, for in it lies His power, which He shares
so gladly with His Son.
62
Learn of His happiness, which is yours. But to accomplish this, all your dark
lessons must be brought willingly to truth and joyously laid down by hands open
to receive, not closed to take. Every dark lesson that you bring to Him Who
teaches light He will accept from you because you do not want it. And He will
gladly exchange each one for the bright lesson He has learned for you. Never
believe that any lesson you have learned apart from Him means anything.
63
You have one test, as sure as God, by which to recognize if what you learned
is true. If you are wholly free of fear of any kind, and if all those who meet or
even think of you share in your perfect peace, then you can be sure that you have
learned God’s lesson and not yours. Unless all this is true, there are dark lessons in
your minds which hurt and hinder you and everyone around you. The absence of
perfect peace means but one thing: you think you do not will for God’s Son what
His Father wills for him. Every dark lesson teaches this in one form or another.
And each bright lesson, with which the Holy Spirit will replace the dark ones you
do not accept and hide, teaches you that you will with the Father unto His Son.
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Do not be concerned how you can learn a lesson so completely different
from everything you have taught yourselves. How would you know? Your part
is very simple.You need only recognize that everything you learned you do not
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want. Ask to be taught and do not use your experiences to confirm what you have
learned. When your peace is threatened or disturbed in any way, say to yourself,
65
I do not know what anything, including this, means.
And so I do not know how to respond to it.
And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now.
By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not know, the Guide
Whom God has given you will speak to you. He will take His rightful place in
your awareness the instant you abandon it and offer it to Him.
67
You cannot be your guide to miracles, for it is you who made them necessary.
And because you did, the means on which you can depend for miracles has been
provided for you. God’s Son can make no needs His Father will not meet if he
but turn to Him ever so little. Yet He cannot compel His Son to turn to Him
and remain Himself. It is impossible that God lose His Identity, for if He did, you
would lose yours. And being yours, He cannot change Himself, for your identity is
changeless. The miracle acknowledges His changelessness by seeing His Son as he
always was and not as he would make himself.The miracle brings the effects which
only guiltlessness can bring and thus establishes the fact that guiltlessness must be.
68
How can you, so firmly bound to guilt and committed so to remain, establish
for yourself your guiltlessness? That is impossible. But be sure that you are willing
to acknowledge that it is impossible. It is only because you think that you can run
some little part or deal with certain aspects of your lives alone that the guidance
of the Holy Spirit is limited. Thus would you make him undependable and use
this fancied undependability as an excuse for keeping certain dark lessons from
Him. And by so limiting the guidance that you would accept, you are unable to
depend on miracles to answer all your problems for you.
69
Do you think that what the Holy Spirit would have you give He would
withhold from you? You have no problems which He cannot solve by offering you
a miracle. Miracles are for you. And every fear or pain or trial you have has been
undone. He has brought all of them to light, having accepted them instead of you
and recognized they never were. There are no dark lessons He has not already
lightened for you. The lessons you would teach yourselves He has corrected
already. They do not exist in His Mind at all. For the past binds Him not and
therefore binds not you. He does not see time as you do. And each miracle He
offers you corrects your use of time and makes it His.
70
He Who has freed you from the past would teach you are free of it. He would
but have you accept His accomplishments as yours because he did them for you.
66
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And because he did, they are yours. He has made you free of what you made.
You can deny Him, but you cannot call on Him in vain. He always gives what
He has made in place of you. He would establish His bright teaching so firmly in
your mind that no dark lessons of guilt can abide in what He has established as
holy by His Presence. Thank God that He is there and works through you. And
all His works are yours. He offers you a miracle with every one you let Him do
through you.
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God’s Son will always be indivisible. As we are held as one in God, so do
we learn as one in Him. God’s Teacher is as like to His Creator as is His Son,
and through His Teacher does God proclaim His Oneness and His Son’s. Listen
in silence, and do not raise your voice against Him. For He teaches the miracle
of oneness, and before His lesson division disappears. Teach like Him here, and
you will remember that you have always created like your Father. The miracle of
creation has never ceased, having the holy stamp of immortality upon it. This is
the Will of God for all creation, and all creation joins in willing this.
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Those who remember always that they know nothing, but who have become
willing to learn everything, will learn it. But whenever they trust themselves, they
will not learn. They have destroyed their motivation for learning by thinking
they already know. Think not you understand anything until you pass the test of
perfect peace, for peace and understanding go together and never can be found
alone. Each brings the other with it, for it is the law of God they be not separate.
They are cause and effect, each to the other, so where one is absent the other
cannot be.
73
Only those who see they cannot know unless the effects of understanding
are with them can really learn at all. And for this, it must be peace they want
and nothing else. Whenever you think you know, peace will depart from you
because you have abandoned the Teacher of Peace. Whenever you fully realize
that you know not, peace will return, for you will have invited Him to do so by
abandoning the ego on behalf of Him. Call not upon the ego for anything. It is
only this that you need do. The Holy Spirit will, of Himself, fill every mind that
so makes room for Him.
74
If you want peace, you must abandon the teacher of attack. The Teacher of
peace will never abandon you.You can desert Him, but He will never reciprocate,
for His faith in you is His understanding. It is as firm as is His faith in His Creator,
and He knows that faith in His Creator must encompass faith in His creation.
In this consistency lies His holiness, which He cannot abandon, for it is not His
Will to do so. With your perfection ever in His sight, He gives the gift of peace
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to everyone who perceives the need for peace and who would have it. Make way
for peace, and it will come. For understanding is in you, and from it peace must
come.
75
The power of God, from which they both arise, is yours as surely as it is
His.You think you know Him not only because, alone, it is impossible to know
Him. Yet see the mighty works that He will do through you, and you must be
convinced you did them through Him. It is impossible to deny the Source of
effects so powerful they could not be of you. Leave room for Him, and you will
find yourself so filled with power that nothing will prevail against your peace. And
this will be the test by which you recognize that you have understood.
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ii.
fifteen
The Purpose of Time
i.
Introduction
C
an you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries, no anxieties,
but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all the time? Yet that is what
time is for—to learn just that and nothing more. God’s Teacher cannot be satisfied
with His teaching until it constitutes all your learning. He has not fulfilled His
teaching function until you have become such a consistent learner that you learn
only of Him. When this has happened, you will no longer need a teacher or time
in which to learn.
15:2
One source of perceived discouragement from which you suffer is your
belief that this takes time, and that the results of the Holy Spirit’s teaching are
far in the future. This is not so. For the Holy Spirit uses time in His own way
and is not bound by it. And all the waste that time seems to bring with it is due
but to your identification with the ego, which uses time to support its belief
in destruction. The ego, like the Holy Spirit, uses time to convince you of the
inevitability of the goal and end of teaching. To the ego the goal is death, which
is its end. But to the Holy Spirit the goal is life, which has no end.
ii.
Uses
of Time
The ego is an ally of time, but not a friend. For it is as mistrustful of death as it
is of life, and what it wants for you it cannot tolerate.The ego wants you dead, but
not itself. The outcome of its strange religion must therefore be the conviction
that it can pursue you beyond the grave. And out of its unwillingness for you to
find peace even in the death it wants for you, it offers you immortality in hell. It
speaks to you of Heaven but assures you that Heaven is not for you. How can the
guilty hope for Heaven? The belief in hell is inescapable to those who identify
with the ego. Their nightmares and their fears are all associated with it.
4
The ego teaches that hell is in the future, for this is what all its teaching is
3
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Uses of Time
directed to. Hell is its goal, for although the ego aims at death and dissolution as
an end, it does not believe it. The goal of death, which it craves for you, leaves it
unsatisfied. No one who follows the ego’s teaching is without the fear of death.
Yet if death were thought of merely as an end to pain, would it be feared? We have
seen this strange paradox in the ego’s thought system before, but never so clearly
as here. For the ego must seem to keep fear from you to keep your allegiance.Yet
it must engender fear in order to maintain itself.
5
Again the ego tries and all too frequently succeeds in doing both by using
dissociation for holding its contradictory aims together so that they seem to be
reconciled. The ego teaches thus: Death is the end as far as hope of Heaven goes.
Yet because you and itself cannot be separated, and because it cannot conceive
of its own death, it will pursue you still because guilt is eternal. Such is the ego’s
version of immortality. And it is this the ego’s version of time supports.
6
The ego teaches that Heaven is here and now because the future is hell. Even
when it attacks so savagely that it tries to take the life of someone who hears it
temporarily as the only voice, it speaks of hell even to him. For it tells him hell
is here and bids him leap from hell into oblivion. The only time the ego allows
anyone to look upon with some amount of equanimity is the past. And even
there its only value is that it is no more.
7
How bleak and despairing is the ego’s use of time! And how terrifying! For
underneath its fanatical insistence that the past and future be the same is hidden
a far more insidious threat to peace.The ego does not advertise its final threat, for
it would have its worshipers still believe that it can offer the escape from it. But
the belief in guilt must lead to the belief in hell, and always does. The only way in
which the ego allows the fear of hell to be experienced is to bring hell here, but
always as a foretaste of the future. For no one who considers himself as deserving
hell can believe that punishment will end in peace.
8
The Holy Spirit teaches thus: There is no hell. Hell is only what the ego has
made of the present. The belief in hell is what prevents you from understanding the
present, because you are afraid of it.The Holy Spirit leads as steadily to Heaven as
the ego drives to hell. For the Holy Spirit,Who knows only the present, uses it to
undo the fear by which the ego would make the present useless.There is no escape
from fear in the ego’s use of time. For time, according to its teaching, is nothing
but a teaching device for compounding guilt until it becomes all-encompassing and
demands vengeance forever.
9
The Holy Spirit would undo all of this now. Fear is not of the present but only
of the past and future, which do not exist. There is no fear in the present when
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iii. Time and
Chapter 15: THE PURPOSE OF TIME
each instant stands clear and separated from the past, without its shadow reaching
out into the future. Each instant is a clean, untarnished birth, in which the Son
of God emerges from the past into the present. And the present extends forever.
It is so beautiful and so clean and free of guilt that nothing but happiness is there.
No darkness is remembered, and immortality and joy are now.
10
This lesson takes no time. For what is time without a past and future? It
has taken time to misguide you so completely, but it takes no time at all to be
what you are. Begin to practice the Holy Spirit’s use of time as a teaching aid
to happiness and peace. Take this very instant, now, and think of it as all there is
of time. Nothing can reach you here out of the past, and it is here that you are
completely absolved, completely free, and wholly without condemnation. From this
holy instant wherein holiness was born again, you will go forth in time without
fear and with no sense of change with time.
11
Time is inconceivable without change, yet holiness does not change. Learn
from this instant more than merely hell does not exist. In this redeeming instant
lies Heaven. And Heaven will not change, for the birth into the holy present is
salvation from change. Change is an illusion, taught by those who could not see
themselves as guiltless. There is no change in Heaven because there is no change
in God. In the holy instant in which you see yourself as bright with freedom, you
will remember God. For remembering Him is to remember freedom.
12
Whenever you are tempted to be dispirited by the thought of how long it
would take to change your mind so completely, ask yourself, “How long is an
instant?” Could you not give so short a time to the Holy Spirit for your salvation?
He asks no more, for He has no need of more. It takes far longer to teach you
how to be willing to give Him this than for Him to use this tiny instant to offer
you the whole of Heaven. In exchange for this instant, He stands ready to give
you the remembrance of eternity.
13
You will never give this holy instant to the Holy Spirit on behalf of your
release while you are unwilling to give it to your brothers on behalf of theirs. For
the instant of holiness is shared, and cannot be yours alone. Remember, then,
when you are tempted to attack a brother, that his instant of release is yours.
Miracles are the instants of release you offer and will receive. They attest to your
willingness to be released and to offer time to the Holy Spirit for His use of it.
How long is an instant? It is as short for your brother as it is for you. Practice
giving this blessed instant of freedom to all who are enslaved by time and thus
make time their friend for them.The Holy Spirit gives their blessed instant to you
through your giving it. As you give it, He offers it to you.
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Eternity
Be not unwilling to give what you would receive of Him, for you join with
Him in giving. In the crystal cleanness of the release you give is your instantaneous
escape from guilt.You must be holy if you offer holiness. How long is an instant?
As long as it takes to reestablish perfect sanity, perfect peace, and perfect love for
everyone, for God, and for yourself. As long as it takes to remember immortality
and your immortal creations who share it with you.As long as it takes to exchange
hell for Heaven. Long enough to transcend all of the ego’s making and ascend
unto your Father.
15
Time is your friend if you leave it to the Holy Spirit to use. He needs but
very little to restore God’s whole power to you. He Who transcends time for you
understands what time is for. Holiness lies not in time but in eternity.There never
was an instant in which God’s Son could lose his purity. His changeless state is
beyond time, for his purity remains forever beyond attack and without variability.
Time stands still in his holiness and changes not. And so it is no longer time at
all. For, caught in the single instant of the eternal sanctity of God’s creation, it is
transformed into forever. Give the eternal instant that eternity may be remembered
for you in that shining instant of perfect release. Offer the miracle of the holy
instant through the Holy Spirit and leave His giving it to you to Him.
14
iii. Time and
Eternity
The Atonement is in time but not for time. Being in you, it is eternal. What
holds remembrance of God cannot be bound by time. No more are you. For
unless God is bound, you cannot be. An instant offered to the Holy Spirit is
offered to God on your behalf, and in that instant you will awaken gently in Him.
In the blessed instant, you will let go all your past learning, and the Holy Spirit
will quickly offer you the whole lesson of peace. What can take time, when all
the obstacles to learning it have been removed? Truth is so far beyond time that
all of it happens at once. For as it was created one, so its oneness depends not on
time at all.
17
Do not be concerned with time and fear not the instant of holiness which
will remove all fear. For the instant of peace is eternal because it is wholly without
fear. It will come, being the lesson God gives you through the Teacher He has
appointed to translate time into eternity. Blessed is God’s Teacher, Whose joy
it is to teach God’s holy Son his holiness. His joy is not contained in time. His
teaching is for you because His joy is yours. Through Him you stand before God’s
altar, where He gently translates hell into Heaven. For it is only in Heaven that
God would have you be.
16
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iv. Littleness Versus
How long can it take to be where God would have you? For you are where
you have forever been and will forever be. All that you have, you have forever.
The blessed instant reaches out to encompass time, as God extends Himself to
encompass you.You who have spent days, hours, and even years in chaining your
brothers to your egos in an attempt to support it and uphold its weakness, do
not perceive the Source of strength. In the holy instant, you will unchain all your
brothers and refuse to support either their weakness or your own.
19
You do not realize how much you have misused your brothers by seeing them
as sources of ego support. As a result, they witness to the ego in your perception
and seem to provide reasons for not letting it go.Yet they are far stronger and much
more compelling witnesses for the Holy Spirit. And they support His strength. It
is, therefore, your choice whether they support the ego or the Holy Spirit in you.
And you will know which you have chosen by their reactions. A Son of God who
has been released through the Holy Spirit in a brother, if the release is complete, is
always recognized. He cannot be denied. As long as you remain uncertain, it can
be only because you have not given complete release. And because of this, you
have not given one single instant completely to the Holy Spirit. For when you
have, you will be sure you have.You will be sure because the witness to Him will
speak so clearly of Him that you will hear and understand.
20
You will doubt until you hear one witness whom you have wholly released
through the Holy Spirit. And then you will doubt no more. The holy instant
has not yet happened to you. Yet it will, and you will recognize it with perfect
certainty. No gift of God is recognized in any other way. You can practice the
mechanics of the holy instant and will learn much from doing so.Yet its shining
and glittering brilliance, which will literally blind you to this world by its own
vision, you cannot supply.And here it is, all in this instant, complete, accomplished,
and given wholly.
21
Start now to practice your little part in separating out the holy instant. You
will receive very specific instructions as you go along. To learn to separate out
this single second and begin to experience it as timeless, is to begin to experience
yourself as not separate. Fear not that you will not be given help in this. God’s
Teacher and His lesson will support your strength. It is only your weakness that
will depart from you in this practice, for it is the practice of the power of God
in you. Use it but for one instant, and you will never deny it again. Who can
deny the Presence of what the universe bows to in appreciation and gladness?
Before the recognition of the universe which witnesses to It, your doubts must
disappear.
iv.
18
296
Magnitude
Littleness Versus Magnitude
Be not content with littleness, but be sure you understand what littleness is
and why you could never be content with it. Littleness is the offering you gave
yourself.You offered this in place of magnitude, and you accepted it. Everything in
this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness in the strange belief
that littleness can content you. When you strive for anything in this world with
the belief that it will bring you peace, you are belittling yourself and blinding
yourself to glory. Littleness and glory are the choices open to your striving and
your vigilance.You will always choose one at the expense of the other.
23
Yet what you do not realize each time you choose is that your choice is your
evaluation of yourself. Choose littleness and you will not have peace, for you will
have judged yourself unworthy of it. And whatever you offer as a substitute is
much too poor a gift to satisfy you. It is essential that you accept the fact, and
accept it gladly, that there is no form of littleness that can ever content you. You
are free to try as many as you wish, but all you will be doing is to delay your
homecoming. For you will be content only in magnitude, which is your home.
24
There is a deep responsibility you owe yourself, and one which you must
learn to remember all the time. The lesson will seem hard at first, but you will
learn to love it when you realize that it is true and constitutes a tribute to your
power.You who have sought and found littleness, remember this: Every decision
which you make stems from what you think you are and represents the value that
you put upon yourself. Believe the little can content you, and by limiting yourself,
you will not be satisfied. For your function is not little, and it is only by finding
your function and fulfilling it that you can escape from littleness.
25
There is no doubt about what your function is, for the Holy Spirit knows
what it is.There is no doubt about its magnitude, for it reaches you through Him
from Magnitude. You do not have to strive for it because you have it. All your
striving must be directed against littleness, for it does require vigilance to protect
your magnitude in this world. To hold your magnitude in perfect awareness in
a world of littleness is a task the little cannot undertake.Yet it is asked of you in
tribute to your magnitude and not your littleness. Nor is it asked of you alone.
26
The power of God will support every effort you make on behalf of His dear
Son. Search for the little, and you deny yourself His power. God is not willing
that His Son be content with less than everything. For He is not content without
His Son, and His Son cannot be content with less than His Father has given him.
We asked you once before, “Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God?”
Let this question be asked you by the Holy Spirit in you every time you make a
22
297
v. Practicing the
decision. For every decision you make does answer this and invites sorrow or joy
accordingly.
27
When God gave Himself to you in your creation, He established you as host
to Him forever. He has not left you, and you have not left Him. All your attempts
to deny His magnitude, and make His Son hostage to the ego cannot make little
whom God has joined with Him. Every decision you make is for Heaven or for
hell and will bring you awareness of what you decided for. The Holy Spirit can
hold your magnitude, clean of all littleness, clearly and in perfect safety in your
minds, untouched by every little gift the world of littleness would offer you. But
for this, you cannot side against Him in what He wills for you.
28
Decide for God through Him. For littleness and the belief that you can
be content with littleness are the decisions you have made about yourself. The
power and the glory that lie in you from God are for all who, like you, perceive
themselves as little and have deceived themselves into believing that littleness can
be blown up by them into a sense of magnitude that can content them. Neither
give littleness, nor accept it. All honor is due the host of God. Your littleness
deceives you, but your magnitude is of Him Who dwells in you and in Whom
you dwell.Touch no one, then, with littleness, in the name of Christ, eternal Host
unto His Father.
29
In this season (Christmas), which celebrates the birth of holiness into this
world, join with me, who decided for holiness for you. It is our task together to
restore the awareness of magnitude to the host whom God appointed for Himself.
It is beyond all your littleness to give the gift of God, but not beyond you. For God
would give Himself through you. He reaches from you to everyone and beyond
everyone to His Son’s creations, but without leaving you. Far beyond your little
world but still in you, He extends forever.Yet He brings all his extensions to you
as host to Him.
30
Is it a sacrifice to leave littleness behind and wander not in vain? It is not
sacrifice to wake to glory. But it is a sacrifice to accept anything less than glory.
Learn that you must be worthy of the Prince of Peace, born in you in honor
of Him Whose host you are. You know not what love means because you have
sought to purchase it with little gifts, thus valuing it too little to be able to
understand its magnitude. Love is not little, and love dwells in you, for you are
host to Him. Before the greatness that lives in you, your poor appreciation of
yourself and all the little offerings you have given slip into nothingness. Holy
Child of God, when will you learn that only holiness can content you and give
you peace?
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Holy Instant
Remember that you learn not for yourself alone, no more than I did. It is
because I learned for you that you can learn of me. I would but teach you what is
yours, so that together we can replace the shabby littleness that binds the host of
God to guilt and weakness with the glad awareness of the glory that is in him. My
birth in you is your awakening to grandeur. Welcome me not into a manger but
into the altar to holiness, where holiness abides in perfect peace. My Kingdom is
not of this world because it is in you. And you are of your Father. Let us join in
honoring you, who must remain forever beyond littleness.
32
Decide with me, who have decided to abide with you. I will as my Father
wills, knowing His Will is constant and at peace forever with Itself. You will be
content with nothing but His Will. Accept no less, remembering that everything
I learned is yours. What my Father loves, I love as He does, and I can no more
accept it as what it is not than He can. And no more can you. When you have
learned to accept what you are, you will make no more gifts to offer to yourselves,
for you will know you are complete, in need of nothing, and unable to accept
anything for yourself. But you will gladly give, having received. The host of God
need not seek to find anything.
33
If you are wholly willing to leave salvation to the plan of God and unwilling
to attempt to grasp for peace yourself, salvation will be given you. Yet think not
you can substitute your plan for His. Rather, join with me in His that we may
release all those who would be bound, proclaiming together that the Son of God
is host to Him. Thus will we let no one forget what you would remember. And
thus will you remember it.
34
Call forth in everyone only the remembrance of God and of the Heaven that
is in him. For where you would help your brother be, there will you think you are.
Hear not his call for hell and littleness, but only his call for Heaven and greatness.
Forget not that his call is yours, and answer him with me. God’s power is forever
on the side of His host, for it protects only the peace in which He dwells. Lay
not littleness before His holy altar, which rises above the stars and reaches even
to Heaven because of what is given it.
31
v.
Practicing
the
Holy Instant
This course is not beyond immediate learning unless you prefer to believe
that what God wills takes time. And this means only that you would rather delay
the recognition that His Will is so. The holy instant is this one and every one. The
one you want it to be it is. The one you would not have it be is lost to you. You
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299
must decide on when it is. Delay it not. For beyond the past and future, in which
you will not find it, it stands in shimmering readiness for your acceptance. Yet
you cannot bring it into glad awareness while you do not want it, for it holds the
whole release from littleness.
36
Your practice must therefore rest upon your willingness to let all littleness go.
The instant in which magnitude will dawn upon you is but as far away as your
desire for it. As long as you desire it not and cherish littleness instead, by so much
is it far from you. By so much as you want it will you bring it nearer. Think not
that you can find salvation in your own way and have it. Give over every plan that
you have made for your salvation in exchange for God’s. His will content you,
and there is nothing else that can bring you peace. For peace is of God and of no
one beside Him.
37
Be humble before Him and yet great in Him. And value no plan of the ego
before the plan of God. For you leave empty your place in His plan, which you
must fulfill if you would join with me, by your decision to join in any plan but His.
I call you to fulfill your holy part in the plan that He has given to the world for its
release from littleness. God would have His host abide in perfect freedom. Every
allegiance to a plan of salvation that is apart from Him diminishes the value of His
Will for you in your own minds. And yet it is your mind that is the host to Him.
38
Would you learn how perfect and immaculate is the holy altar on which
your Father has placed Himself? This you will recognize in the holy instant in
which you willingly and gladly give over every plan but His. For there lies peace,
perfectly clear because you have been willing to meet its conditions. You can
claim the holy instant any time and anywhere you want it. In your practice, try
to give over every plan you have accepted for finding magnitude in littleness. It
is not there. Use the holy instant only to recognize that you alone cannot know
where it is and can only deceive yourself.
39
I stand within the holy instant, as clear as you would have me. And the extent
to which you learn to be willing to accept me is the measure of the time in
which the holy instant will be yours. I call to you to make the holy instant yours
at once, for the release from littleness in the mind of the host of God depends on
willingness and not on time. The reason why this course is simple is that truth is
simple. Complexity is of the ego and is nothing more than the ego’s attempt to
obscure the obvious.
40
You could live forever in the holy instant, beginning now and reaching to eternity,
but for a very simple reason. Do not obscure the simplicity of this reason, for if you
do, it will be only because you prefer not to recognize it and not to let it go. The
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v. Practicing the
Holy Instant
simple reason, simply stated, is this: The holy instant is a time in which you receive
and give perfect communication. This means, however, that it is a time in which
your mind is open, both to receive and give. It is the recognition that all minds are in
communication. It therefore seeks to change nothing, but merely to accept everything.
41
How can you do this when you would prefer to have private thoughts and
keep them? The only way you could do that is to deny the perfect communication
that makes the holy instant what it is. You believe that it is possible to harbor
thoughts you would not share and that salvation lies in keeping your thoughts
to yourself alone. For in private thoughts, known only to yourself, you think you
find a way to keep what you would have alone and share what you would share.
And then you wonder why it is that you are not in full communication with
those around you and with God Who surrounds all of you together.
42
Every thought you would keep hidden shuts communication off because
you would have it so. It is impossible to recognize perfect communication while
breaking communication holds value to you. Ask yourselves honestly, “Would I
want to have perfect communication, and am I wholly willing to let everything
that interferes with it go forever?” If the answer is no, then the Holy Spirit’s
readiness to give it to you is not enough to make it yours, for you are not ready
to share it with Him. And it cannot come into a mind that has decided to oppose
it. For the holy instant is given and received with equal willingness, being the
acceptance of the single Will that governs all thought.
43
The necessary condition for the holy instant does not require that you have
no thoughts which are not pure. But it does require that you have none that
you would keep. Innocence is not of your making. It is given you the instant
you would have it. Yet it would not be Atonement if there were no need for
Atonement.You will not be able to accept perfect communication as long as you
would hide it from yourself. For what you would hide is hidden from you.
44
In your practice, then, try only to be vigilant against deception and seek
not to protect the thoughts you would keep unto yourself. Let the Holy Spirit’s
purity shine them away and bring all your awareness to the readiness for purity
He offers you.Thus will He make you ready to acknowledge that you are host to
God and hostage to no one and nothing.
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vi. The
vi. The
Holy Instant
and
Special Relationships
The holy instant is the Holy Spirit’s most useful learning device for teaching
you love’s meaning. For its purpose is to suspend judgment entirely. Judgment
always rests on the past, for past experience is the basis on which you judge.
Judgment becomes impossible without the past, for without it you do not
understand anything.You would make no attempt to judge because it would be
quite apparent to you that you do not know what anything means. You are afraid
of this because you believe that without the ego all would be chaos. Yet I assure
you that without the ego all would be love.
46
The past is the ego’s chief learning device, for it is in the past that you learned
to define your own needs and acquired methods for meeting them on your own
terms.We said before that to limit love to part of the Sonship is to bring guilt into
your relationships and thus make them unreal. If you seek to separate out certain
aspects of the totality and look to them to meet your imagined needs, you are
attempting to use separation to save you. How, then, could guilt not enter? For
separation is the source of guilt, and to appeal to it for salvation is to believe you
are alone.To be alone is to be guilty. For to experience yourself as alone is to deny
the oneness of the Father and his Son and thus to attack reality.
47
You cannot love parts of reality and understand what love means. If you
would love unlike to God,Who knows no special love, how can you understand it?
To believe that special relationships, with special love, can offer you salvation is the
belief that separation is salvation. For it is the complete equality of the Atonement
in which salvation lies. How can you decide that special aspects of the Sonship
can give you more than others? The past has taught you this.Yet the holy instant
teaches you it is not so.
48
Because of guilt, all special relationships have some elements of fear in them.
And this is why they shift and change so frequently. They are not based on
changeless love alone. And love where fear has entered cannot be depended on
because it is not perfect. In His function as Interpretor of what you have made,
the Holy Spirit uses special relationships, which you have chosen to support the
ego, as a learning experience which points to truth. Under His teaching, every
relationship becomes a lesson in love.
49
The Holy Spirit knows no one is special. Yet He also perceives that you
have made special relationships, which He would purify and not let you destroy.
However unholy the reason why you made them may be, He can translate them
into holiness by removing as much fear as you will let Him. You can place any
relationship under His care and be sure that it will not result in pain if you offer
45
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Holy Instant and Special Relationships
Him your willingness to have it serve no need but His. All the guilt in it arises
from your use of it. All the love from His. Do not, then, be afraid to let go your
imagined needs, which would destroy the relationship.Your only need is His.
50
Any relationship which you would substitute for another has not been
offered to the Holy Spirit for His use.There is no substitute for love. If you would
attempt to substitute one aspect of love for another, you have placed less value on
one and more on the other. You have not only separated them, but you have also
judged against both.Yet you had judged against yourself first, or you would never
have imagined that you needed them as they were not. Unless you had seen
yourself as without love, you could not have judged them so like you in lack.
51
The ego’s use of relationships is so fragmented that it frequently goes even
farther—one part of one aspect suits its purposes, while it prefers different parts of
another aspect.Thus does it assemble reality to its own capricious liking, offering
for your seeking a picture whose likeness does not exist. For there is nothing in
Heaven or earth that it resembles, and so however much you seek for its reality,
you cannot find it because it is not real.
52
Everyone on earth has formed special relationships, and although this is not
so in Heaven, the Holy Spirit knows how to bring a touch of Heaven to them
here. In the holy instant no one is special, for your personal needs intrude on
no one to make them different. Without the values from the past, you would see
them all the same and like yourself. Nor would you see any separation between
yourself and them. In the holy instant, you see in each relationship what it will be
when you perceive only the present.
53
God knows you now. He remembers nothing, having always known you
exactly as He knows you now.The holy instant parallels His knowing by bringing
all perception out of the past, thus removing the frame of reference you have built
by which to judge your brothers. Once this is gone, the Holy Spirit substitutes
His frame of reference for it. His frame of reference is simply God. The Holy
Spirit’s timelessness lies only here. For in the holy instant, free of the past, you see
that love is in you, and you have no need to look without and snatch it guiltily
from where you thought is was.
54
All your relationships are blessed in the holy instant because the blessing
is not limited. In the holy instant, the Sonship gains as one. And united in your
blessing, it becomes one to you. The meaning of love is the meaning God gave to
it. Give to it any meaning apart from His, and it is impossible to understand it.
Every brother God loves as He loves you—neither less nor more. He needs them
all equally, and so do you. In time you have been told to offer miracles as Christ
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vii. The
directs and let the Holy Spirit bring to you those who are seeking you.Yet in the
holy instant, you unite directly with God, and all your brothers join in Christ.
Those who are joined in Christ are in no way separate. For Christ is the Self the
Sonship shares, as God shares His Self with Christ.
55
Think you that you can judge the Self of God? God has created it beyond
judgment out of His need to extend His Love. With love in you, you have no
need except to extend it. In the holy instant, there is no conflict of needs, for there
is only one. For the holy instant reaches to eternity and to the Mind of God. And
it is only there love has meaning, and only there can it be understood.
56
It is impossible to use one relationship at the expense of another and not
suffer guilt. And it is equally impossible to condemn part of a relationship and
find peace within it. Under the Holy Spirit’s teaching, all relationships are seen as
total commitments, yet they do not conflict with one another in any way. Perfect
faith in each one for its ability to satisfy you completely arises only from perfect
faith in yourself. And this you cannot have while guilt remains. And there will
be guilt as long as you accept the possibility, and cherish it, that you can make a
brother what he is not because you would have him so.
57
You have so little faith in yourself because you are unwilling to accept the
fact that perfect love is in you. And so you seek without for what you cannot
find without. I offer you my perfect faith in you in place of all your doubt. But
forget not that my faith must be as perfect in all your brothers as it is in you, or
it would be a limited gift to you. In the holy instant, we share our faith in God’s
Son because we recognize together that he is wholly worthy of it, and in our
appreciation of his worth, we cannot doubt his holiness. And so we love him.
vii. The
Holy Instant
and the
Laws
of
God
All separation vanishes as holiness is shared. For holiness is power, and by
sharing it, it gains in strength. If you seek for satisfaction in gratifying your needs
as you perceive them, you must believe that strength comes from another, and
what you gain he loses. Someone must always lose if you perceive yourself as weak.
Yet there is another interpretation of relationships which transcends the concept
of loss of power completely.
59
You do not find it difficult to believe that, when another calls on God
for love, your call remains as strong. Nor do you think that, by God’s answer
to him, your hope of answer is diminished. On the contrary, you are far more
inclined to regard his success as witness to the possibility of yours. That is because
58
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Holy Instant and the Laws of God
you recognize, however dimly, that God is an idea, and so your faith in Him is
strengthened by sharing. What you find difficult to accept is the fact that, like your
Father, you are an idea. And like Him, you can give yourself completely, wholly
without loss, and only with gain.
60
Herein lies peace, for here there is no conflict. In the world of scarcity, love
has no meaning, and peace is impossible. For gain and loss are both accepted, and
so no one is aware that perfect love is in him. In the holy instant, you recognize
the idea of love in you and unite this idea with the Mind that thought it and
could not relinquish it. By holding it within itself, there was no loss. The holy
instant thus becomes a lesson in how to hold all of your brothers in your mind,
experiencing not loss, but completion. From this it follows you can only give. And
this is love, for this alone is natural under the laws of God.
61
In the holy instant, the laws of God prevail, and only they have meaning.
The laws of this world cease to hold any meaning at all. When the Son of God
accepts the laws of God as what he gladly wills, it is impossible that he be bound
or limited in any way. In this instant, he is as free as God would have him be. For
the instant he refuses to be bound, he is not bound.
62
In the holy instant, nothing happens that has not always been. Only the veil
that has been drawn across reality is lifted. Nothing has changed.Yet the awareness
of changelessness comes swiftly as the veil of time is pushed aside. No one who
has not yet experienced the lifting of the veil and felt himself drawn irresistibly
into the light behind it can have faith in love without fear. Yet the Holy Spirit
gives you this faith because He offered it to me and I accepted it. Fear not the holy
instant will be denied you, for I denied it not. And through me the Holy Spirit
gave it unto you, as you will give it. Let no need that you perceive obscure your
need of this. For in the holy instant, you will recognize the only need the aspects
of the Son of God share equally, and by this recognition you will join with me
in offering what is needed.
63
It is through us that peace will come. Join me in the idea of peace, for in ideas
minds can communicate. If you would give yourself as your Father gives His Self,
you will learn to understand selfhood. And therein is love’s meaning understood.
But remember that understanding is of the mind and only of the mind. Knowledge
is therefore of the mind, and its conditions are in the mind with it. If you were
not only an idea and nothing else, you could not be in full communication with
all that ever was.Yet as long as you prefer to be something else, or would attempt
to be nothing else and something else together, the language of communication,
which you know perfectly, you will not remember.
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viii. The
In the holy instant God is remembered, and the language of communication
with all your brothers is remembered with Him. For communication is
remembered together, as is truth.There is no exclusion in the holy instant because
the past is gone and with it goes the whole basis for exclusion.Without its source,
exclusion vanishes. And this permits your Source and that of all your brothers to
replace it in your awareness. God and the power of God will take their rightful
place in you, and you will experience the full communication of ideas with ideas.
Through your ability to do this, you will learn what you must be, for you will
begin to understand what your Creator is and what His creation is along with
Him.
64
viii. The
Holy Instant
and
Communication
Beyond the poor attraction of the special love relationship and always obscured
by it is the powerful attraction of the Father for His Son. There is no other love
that can satisfy you, because there is no other love.This is the only love that is fully
given and fully returned. Being complete, it asks nothing. Being wholly pure,
everyone joined in it has everything. This is not the basis for any relationship in
which the ego enters. For every relationship on which the ego embarks is special.
The ego establishes relationships only to get something. And it would keep the
giver bound to itself through guilt.
66
It is impossible for the ego to enter into any relationship without anger, for
the ego believes that anger makes friends. This is not its statement, but it is its
purpose. For the ego really believes that it can get and keep by making guilty. This
is its one attraction; an attraction so weak that it would have no hold at all, except
that no one recognizes it. For the ego always seems to attract through love and has
no attraction at all to anyone who perceives that it attracts through guilt.
67
The sick attraction of guilt must be recognized for what it is. For having
been made real to you, it is essential to look at it clearly, and by withdrawing
your investment in it, to learn to let it go. No one would choose to let go what
he believes has value. Yet the attraction of guilt has value to you only because
you have not looked at what it is and have judged it completely in the dark. As
we bring it to light, your only question will be why it was you ever wanted it.
You have nothing to lose by looking open-eyed at this, for ugliness such as this
belongs not in your holy mind. The host of God can have no real investment
here.
68
We said before that the ego attempts to maintain and increase guilt, but
in such a way that you do not recognize what it would do to you. For it is the
65
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Holy Instant and Communication
ego’s fundamental doctrine that what you do to others, you have escaped. The ego
wishes no one well. Yet its survival depends on your belief that you are exempt
from its evil intentions. It counsels, therefore, that if you are host to it, it will
enable you to direct the anger that it holds outward, thus protecting you. And thus
it embarks on an endless, unrewarding chain of special relationships, forged out
of anger and dedicated to but one insane belief—that the more anger you invest
outside yourself, the safer you become.
69
It is this chain that binds the Son of God to guilt, and it is this chain the
Holy Spirit would remove from his holy mind. For the chain of savagery belongs
not around the chosen host of God, who cannot make himself host to the ego. In
the name of his release, and in the name of Him Who would release him, let us
look more closely at the relationships which the ego contrives and let the Holy
Spirit judge them truly. For it is certain that, if you will look at them, you will
offer them gladly to Him.What He can make of them, you do not know, but you
will become willing to find out if you are willing, first, to perceive what you have
made of them.
70
In one way or another, every relationship which the ego makes is based
on the idea that by sacrificing itself, it becomes bigger. The “sacrifice,” which it
regards as purification, is actually the root of its bitter resentment. For it would
much prefer to attack directly and avoid delaying what it really wants.Yet the ego
acknowledges “reality” as it sees it and recognizes that no one could interpret
direct attack as love.Yet to make guilty is direct attack but does not seem to be. For
the guilty expect attack, and having asked for it, they are attracted to it.
71
In these insane relationships, the attraction of what you do not want seems
to be much stronger than the attraction of what you do. For each one thinks
that he has sacrificed something to the other and hates him for it.Yet this is what
he thinks he wants. He is not in love with the other at all. He merely believes
he is in love with sacrifice. And for this sacrifice, which he demanded of himself,
he demands the other accept the guilt and sacrifice himself as well. Forgiveness
becomes impossible, for the ego believes that to forgive another is to lose him.
For it is only by attack without forgiveness that the ego can ensure the guilt which
holds all its relationships together.
72
Yet they only seem to be together. For relationships, to the ego, mean only
that bodies are together. It is always physical closeness that the ego demands, and it
does not object where the mind goes or what it thinks, for this seems unimportant.
As long as the body is there to receive its sacrifice, it is content. To the ego, the
mind is private, and only the body can be shared. Ideas are basically of no concern,
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ix. The
except as they draw the body of another closer or farther. And it is in these terms
that it evaluates ideas as good or bad. What makes another guilty and holds him
through guilt is “good.” What releases him from guilt is “bad,” because he would
no longer believe that bodies communicate, and so he would be “gone.”
73
Suffering and sacrifice are the gifts with which the ego would “bless” all
unions. And those who are united at its altar accept suffering and sacrifice as
the price of union. In their angry alliances, born of the fear of loneliness and
yet dedicated to the continuance of loneliness, they seek relief from guilt by
increasing it in the other. For they believe that this decreases it in them.The other
seems always to be attacking and wounding them, perhaps in little ways, perhaps
“unconsciously,” yet never without demand of sacrifice. The fury of those joined
at the ego’s altar far exceeds your awareness of it. For what the ego really wants,
you do not realize.
74
Whenever you are angry, you can be sure that you have formed a special
relationship which the ego has “blessed,” for anger is its blessing. Anger takes
many forms, but it cannot long deceive those who will learn that love brings no
guilt at all, and what brings guilt cannot be love and must be anger. All anger is
nothing more than an attempt to make someone feel guilty, and this attempt is
the only basis which the ego accepts for special relationships. Guilt is the only
need the ego has, and as long as you identify with it, guilt will remain attractive
to you.
75
Yet remember this—to be with a body is not communication. And if you
think it is, you will feel guilty about communication and will be afraid to hear the
Holy Spirit, recognizing in His voice your own need to communicate. The Holy
Spirit cannot teach through fear. And how can He communicate with you while
you believe that to communicate is to make yourself alone? It is clearly insane to
believe that by communicating you will be abandoned. And yet you do believe
it. For you think that your minds must be kept private or you will lose them, and
if your bodies are together your minds remain your own. The union of bodies
thus becomes the way in which you would keep minds apart. For bodies cannot
forgive. They can only do as the mind directs.
76
The illusion of the autonomy of the body and its ability to overcome
loneliness is but the working of the ego’s plan to establish its own autonomy.
As long as you believe that to be with a body is companionship, you will be
compelled to attempt to keep your brother in his body, held there by guilt. And
you will see safety in guilt and danger in communication. For the ego will always
teach that loneliness is solved by guilt and that communication is the cause of
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Holy Instant and Real Relationships
loneliness. And despite the evident insanity of this lesson, you have learned it.
77
Forgiveness lies in communication as surely as damnation lies in guilt. It is the
Holy Spirit’s teaching function to instruct those who believe that communication
is damnation that communication is salvation. And He will do so, for the power of
God in Him and you is joined in real relationship, so holy and so strong that it can
overcome even this without fear. It is through the holy instant that what seems
impossible is accomplished, making it evident that it is not impossible. In the holy
instant, guilt holds no attraction, since communication has been restored. And
guilt, whose only purpose is to disrupt communication, has no function here.
78
Here there is no concealment and no private thoughts. The willingness to
communicate attracts communication to it and overcomes loneliness completely.
There is complete forgiveness here, for there is no desire to exclude anyone
from your completion in sudden recognition of the value of his part in it. In
the protection of your wholeness, all are invited and made welcome. And you
understand that your completion is God’s, Whose only need is to have you be
complete. For your completion makes you His in your awareness. And here it is
that you experience yourself as you were created and as you are.
ix. The
Holy Instant
and
Real Relationships
The holy instant does not replace the need for learning, for the Holy Spirit
must not leave you as your Teacher until the holy instant has extended far beyond
time. For a teaching assignment such as His, He must use everything in this world
for your release. He must side with every sign or token of your willingness to
learn of Him what the truth must be. He is swift to utilize whatever you offer
Him on behalf of this. His concern and care for you are limitless. In the face of
your fear of forgiveness, which He perceives as clearly as He knows forgiveness
is release, He will teach you to remember that forgiveness is not loss but your
salvation. And that in complete forgiveness, in which you recognize that there is
nothing to forgive, you are absolved completely.
80
Hear him gladly and learn of Him that you have need of no special relationships
at all.You but seek in them what you have thrown away. And through them you
will never learn the value of what you have cast aside but what you still desire
with all your hearts. Let us join together in making the holy instant all that there
is by desiring that it be all that there is. God’s Son has such great need of your
willingness to strive for this that you cannot conceive of need so great. Behold
the only need that God and His Son share and will to meet together.You are not
alone in this. The will of your creations call to you to share your will with them.
79
309
Turn, then, in peace from guilt to God and them.
81
Relate only with what will never leave you and what you can never leave.The
loneliness of God’s Son is the loneliness of his Father. Refuse not the awareness
of your completion and seek not to restore it to yourselves. Fear not to give
redemption over to your Redeemer’s love. He will not fail you, for He comes
from One Who cannot fail. Accept your sense of failure as nothing more than a
mistake in who you are. For the holy host of God is beyond failure, and nothing
that he wills can be denied.You are forever in a relationship so holy that it calls to
everyone to escape from loneliness and join you in your love. And where you are
must everyone seek and find you there.
82
Think but an instant on this: God gave the Sonship to you to ensure your
perfect creation. This was His gift, for as He withheld Himself not from you,
He withheld not His creation. Nothing that ever was created but is yours. Your
relationships are with the universe. And this universe, being of God, is far beyond
the petty sum of all the separate bodies you perceive. For all its parts are joined in
God through Christ, where they become like to their Father. For Christ knows
of no separation from His Father,Who is His one relationship, in which He gives
as His Father gives to Him.
83
The Holy Spirit is God’s attempt to free you of what He does not understand.
And because of the Source of the attempt, it will succeed.The Holy Spirit asks you
to respond as God does, for He would teach you what you do not understand.
God would respond to every need, whatever form it takes. And so He has kept
this channel open to receive His communication to you and yours to Him. God
does not understand your problem in communication, for He does not share it
with you. It is only you who believe that it is understandable.
84
The Holy Spirit knows that it is not understandable, and yet He understands
it because you have made it. In Him alone lies the awareness of what God cannot
know and what you do not understand. It is His holy function to accept them
both, and by removing every element of disagreement, to join them into one.
He will do this because it is His function. Leave, then, what seems to you to be
impossible to Him Who knows it must be possible because it is the Will of God.
And let Him Whose teaching is only of God teach you the only meaning of
relationships. For God created the only relationship which has meaning, and that
is His relationship with you.
85
As the ego would limit your perception of your brothers to the body, so
would the Holy Spirit release your vision and let you see the Great Rays shining
from them, so unlimited that they reach to God. It is this shift in vision which
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ix. The
Holy Instant and Real Relationships
is accomplished in the holy instant. Yet it is needful for you to learn just what
this shift entails, so you will become willing to make it permanent. Given this
willingness, it will not leave you, for it is permanent. For once you have accepted
it as the only perception you want, it is translated into knowledge by the part
which God Himself plays in the Atonement, for it is the only step in it He
understands. Therefore, in this there will be no delay when you are ready for it.
God is ready now, but you are not.
86
Our task is but to continue as fast as possible the necessary process of looking
straight at all the interference and seeing it exactly as it is. For it is impossible to
recognize as wholly without gratification what you think you want. The body is
the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of the separation. And both are
nothing more than attempts to limit communication and thereby to make it
impossible. For communication must be unlimited in order to have meaning,
and deprived of meaning, it will not satisfy you completely.Yet it remains the only
means by which you can establish real relationships.
87
Real relationships have no limits, having been established by God. In the holy
instant, where the Great Rays replace the body in awareness, the recognition of
relationships without limits is given you. But to see this, it is necessary to give
up every use the ego has for the body and to accept the fact that the ego has no
purpose you would share with it. For the ego would limit everyone to a body
for its purposes, and while you think it has a purpose, you will choose to utilize
the means by which it tries to turn its purpose into accomplishment. This will
never be accomplished.Yet you have surely recognized that the ego, whose goals
are altogether unattainable, will strive for them with all its might and will do so
with the strength which you have given it.
88
It is impossible to divide your strength between Heaven and hell, God and
the ego, and release your power unto creation, which is the only purpose for
which it was given you. Love would always give increase. Limits are demanded by
the ego, representing its demands to make little and ineffectual. Limit your vision
of a brother to his body, which you will do as long as you would not release him
from it, and you have denied his gift to you. His body cannot give it. And seek it
not through yours. Yet your minds are already continuous, and their union need
only be accepted, and the loneliness in Heaven is gone.
89
If you would but let the Holy Spirit tell you of the love of God for you and
the need your creations have to be with you forever, you would experience the
attraction of the eternal. No one can hear Him speak of this and long remain
willing to linger here. For it is your will to be in Heaven, where you are complete
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x. The Time of
and quiet in such sure and loving relationships that any limit is impossible.Would
you not exchange your little relationships for this? For the body is little and
limited, and only those whom you would see without the limits the ego would
impose on them can offer you the gift of freedom.
90
You have no conception of the limits you have placed on your perception and
no idea of all the loveliness that you could see. But this you must remember—the
attraction of guilt opposes the attraction of God. His attraction for you remains
unlimited, but because your power, being His, is as great as His, you can turn
away from love. What you invest in guilt, you withdraw from God. And your
sight grows weak and dim and limited, for you have attempted to separate the
Father from the Son and limit their communication. Seek not Atonement in
further separation. And limit not your vision of God’s Son to what interferes with
his release and what the Holy Spirit must undo to set him free. For his belief in
limits has imprisoned him.
91
When the body ceases to attract you and when you place no value on it as a
means for getting anything, then there will be no interference in communication,
and your thoughts will be as free as God’s. As you let the Holy Spirit teach you
how to use the body only for purposes of communication and renounce its use
for separation and attack which the ego sees in it, you will learn you have no
need of a body at all. In the holy instant there are no bodies, and you experience
only the attraction of God. Accepting it as undivided, you join Him wholly in
an instant. The reality of this relationship becomes the only truth that you could
ever want. All truth is here.
x. The Time of
Christ
It is in your power in time to delay the perfect union of the Father and the Son.
For in this world, the attraction of guilt does stand between them. Neither time
nor season means anything in eternity. But here it is the Holy Spirit’s function
to use them both, though not as the ego uses them. This is the season when you
would celebrate my birth into the world.Yet you know not how to do it. Let the
Holy Spirit teach you, and let me celebrate your birth through Him.The only gift
I can accept of you is the gift I gave to you. Release me as I will your release. The
time of Christ we celebrate together, for it has no meaning if we are apart.
93
The holy instant is truly the time of Christ. For in this liberating instant, no
guilt is laid upon the Son of God, and his unlimited power is thus restored to
him. What other gift can you offer me, when only this I will to offer you? And to
see me is to see me in everyone and offer everyone the gift you offer me. I am as
92
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Christ
incapable of receiving sacrifice as God is, and every sacrifice you ask of yourself,
you ask of me. Learn now that sacrifice of any kind is nothing but a limitation
imposed on giving. And by this limitation, you have limited acceptance of the
gift I offer you.
94
We who are one cannot give separately. When you are willing to accept our
relationship as real, guilt will hold no attraction for you. For in our union, you
will accept all of our brothers.The gift of union is the only gift that I was born to
give. Give it to me, that you may have it.The time of Christ is the time appointed
for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone. And by your acceptance of it, you
have offered it to everyone. It is in your power to make this season holy, for it is in
your power to make the time of Christ be now.
95
It is possible to do this all at once because there is but one shift in perception
that is necessary, for you made but one mistake. It seems like many, but it is all the
same. For though the ego takes many forms, it is always the same idea.What is not
love is always fear and nothing else. It is not necessary to follow fear through all
the circuitous routes by which it burrows underground and hides in darkness, to
emerge in forms quite different from what it is.Yet it is necessary to examine each
one as long as you would retain the principle which governs all of them. When
you are willing to regard them not as separate but as different manifestations
of the same idea, and one you do not want, they go together. The idea is simply
this—you believe that it is possible to be host to the ego or hostage to God. This
is the choice you think you have, and the decision which you believe that you
must make.
96
You see no other alternatives, for you cannot accept the fact that sacrifice
gets nothing. Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system that salvation apart
from sacrifice means nothing to you. Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so
profound that you cannot conceive of love without sacrifice. And it is this that
you must look upon—sacrifice is attack, not love. If you would accept but this one
idea, your fear of love would vanish. Guilt cannot last when the idea of sacrifice
has been removed. For if there is sacrifice, as you are convinced, someone must
pay and someone must get. And the only question which remains to be decided
is how much is the price for getting what.
97
As host to the ego, you believe that you can give all your guilt away whatever
you think and purchase peace. And the payment does not seem to be yours.While
it is obvious that the ego does demand payment, it never seems to be demanding
it of you. For you are unwilling to recognize that the ego, which you invited,
is treacherous only to those who think they are its host. The ego will never let
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xi. The
you perceive this, since this recognition would make it homeless. For when this
recognition dawns clearly, you will not be deceived by any form the ego takes to
protect itself from your sight.
98
Each form will be recognized as but a cover for the one idea that hides
behind them all—that love demands sacrifice and is therefore inseparable from
attack and fear. And that guilt is the price of love, which must be paid by fear. How
fearful, then, has God become to you, and how great a sacrifice do you believe
His love demands! For total love would demand total sacrifice. And so the ego
seems to demand less of you than God, and of the two is judged as the lesser of
two evils, one to be feared a little, but the other to be destroyed. For you see love
as destructive, and your only question is who is to be destroyed, you or another?
You seek to answer this question in your special relationships, in which you are
both destroyer and destroyed in part, but with the idea of being able to be neither
completely. And this you think saves you from God, Whose total love would
completely destroy you.
99
You think that everyone outside yourself demands your sacrifice, but you do
not see that only you demand sacrifice and only of yourself. Yet the demand of
sacrifice is so savage and so fearful that you cannot accept it where it is. But the real
price of not accepting this has been so great that you have given God away rather
than look at it. For if God would demand total sacrifice of you, you thought it
safer to project Him outward and away from you and not be host to Him.To Him
you ascribed the ego’s treachery, inviting it to take His place to protect you from
Him. And you do not recognize that it is what you invited in that would destroy
you and does demand total sacrifice of you. No partial sacrifice will appease this
savage guest, for it is an invader who but seems to offer kindness, but always to
make the sacrifice complete.
100
You will not succeed in being partial hostage to the ego, for it keeps no bargains
and would leave you nothing.You will have to choose between total freedom and total
bondage, for there are no alternatives but these.You have tried many compromises
in the attempt to avoid recognizing the one decision which must be made. And
yet it is the recognition of the decision just as it is that makes the decision so easy!
Salvation is simple being of God and therefore very easy to understand. Do not try
to project it from you and see it outside yourself. In you are both the question and
the answer—the demand for sacrifice and the peace of God
314
xi. The
End
of
End of Sacrifice
Sacrifice
Fear not to recognize the whole idea of sacrifice as solely of your making.
And seek not safety by attempting to protect yourself from where it is not.Your
brothers and your Father have become very fearful to you.And you would bargain
with them for a few special relationships in which you think you see some scraps
of safety. Do not try longer to keep apart your thoughts and the Thought that has
been given you. When they are brought together and perceived where they are,
the choice between them is nothing more than a gentle awakening and as simple
as opening your eyes to daylight when you have no more need of sleep.
102
The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. See it not outside yourself
but shining in the Heaven within and accept it as the sign the time of Christ
has come. He comes demanding nothing. No sacrifice of any kind of anyone is
asked by Him. In His Presence, the whole idea of sacrifice loses all meaning. For
He is Host to God. And you need but invite Him in Who is there already, by
recognizing that His Host is One, and no thought alien to His Oneness can abide
with Him there. Love must be total to give Him welcome, for the Presence of
Holiness creates the holiness which surrounds it. No fear can touch the host who
cradles God in the time of Christ, for the Host is as holy as the Perfect Innocence
which He protects and Whose power protects Him.
103
This Christmas, give the Holy Spirit everything that would hurt you. Let
yourself be healed completely that you may join with Him in healing, and let
us celebrate our release together by releasing everyone with us. Leave nothing
behind, for release is total, and when you have accepted it with me, you will give
it with me. All pain and sacrifice and littleness will disappear in our relationship,
which is as innocent as our relationship with our Father, and as powerful. Pain
will be brought to us and disappear in our presence, and without pain there can
be no sacrifice. And without sacrifice, there love must be.
104
You who believe that sacrifice is love must learn that sacrifice is separation from
love. For sacrifice brings guilt as surely as love brings peace. Guilt is the condition
of sacrifice, as peace is the condition for the awareness of your relationship with
God. Through guilt you exclude your Father and your brothers from yourself.
Through peace you invite them back and realize that they are where your
invitation bids them be. What you excluded from yourself seems fearful, for you
endowed it with fear and tried to cast it out though it was part of you. Who can
perceive part of himself as loathsome and live within himself in peace? And who
can try to resolve the perceived conflict of Heaven and hell in him by casting
Heaven out and giving it the attributes of hell without experiencing himself as
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xi. The
incomplete and lonely?
105
As long as you perceive the body as your reality, so long will you perceive
yourself as lonely and deprived. And so long will you also perceive yourself as a
victim of sacrifice, justified in sacrificing others. For who could thrust Heaven and
its Creator aside without a sense of sacrifice and loss? And who can suffer sacrifice
and loss without attempting to restore himself? Yet how could you accomplish
this yourselves when the basis of your attempts is the belief in the reality of the
deprivation? For deprivation breeds attack, being the belief that attack is justified.
And as long as you would retain the deprivation, attack becomes salvation, and
sacrifice becomes love.
106
So is it that in all your seeking for love, you seek for sacrifice and find it.Yet
you find not love. It is impossible to deny what love is and still recognize it. The
meaning of love lies in what you have cast outside yourself, and it has no meaning
at all apart from you. It is what you preferred to keep that has no meaning, while
all that you would keep away holds all the meaning of the universe and holds the
universe together in its meaning. For unless the universe were joined in you, it
would be apart from God, and to be without Him is to be without meaning.
107
In the holy instant, the condition of love is met, for minds are joined without
the body’s interference, and where there is communication, there is peace. The
Prince of Peace was born to reestablish the condition of love by teaching that
communication remains unbroken, even if the body is destroyed, provided that
you see not the body as the necessary means of communication. And if you
understand this lesson, you will realize that to sacrifice the body is to sacrifice
nothing, and communication, which must be of the mind, cannot be sacrificed.
Where, then, is sacrifice?
108
The lesson I was born to teach and still would teach to all my brothers is
that sacrifice is nowhere and love is everywhere. For communication embraces
everything, and in the peace it re-establishes, love comes of itself. Let no despair
darken the joy of Christmas, for the time of Christ is meaningless apart from joy.
Let us join in celebrating peace by demanding no sacrifice of anyone, for so will
you offer me the love I offer you. What can be more joyous than to perceive we
are deprived of nothing? Such is the message of the time of Christ, which I give
you that you may give it and return it to the Father, Who gave it to me. For in
the time of Christ, communication is restored, and He joins us in the celebration
of His Son’s creation.
109
God offers thanks to the holy host who would receive Him and let Him
enter and abide where He would be. And by your welcome does He welcome
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End of Sacrifice
you into Himself, for what is contained in you who welcome Him is returned to
Him. And we but celebrate His Wholeness as we welcome Him into ourselves.
Those who receive the Father are one with Him, being host to Him Who created
them. And by allowing Him to enter, the remembrance of the Father enters with
Him, and with Him they remember the only relationship they ever had and ever
want to have.
110
This is the weekend in which a new year will be born from the time of
Christ. I have perfect faith in you to do all that you would accomplish. Nothing
will be lacking, and you will make complete and not destroy. Say and understand
this:
111
I give you to the Holy Spirit as part of myself.
I know that you will be released, unless I want to
use you to imprison myself.
In the name of my freedom I will your release,
Because I recognize that we will be released together.
So will the year begin in joy and freedom. There is much to do, and we
have been long delayed. Accept the holy instant as this year is born and take your
place, so long left unfulfilled, in the Great Awakening. Make this year different by
making it all the same. And let all your relationships be made holy for you. This
is our will. Amen.
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ii. True
4
si x teen
I am not alone, and I would not intrude the past upon my Guest.
I have invited Him, and He is here.
I need do nothing except not to interfere.
ii. True
The Forgiveness of Illusions
i.
T
Introduction
o empathize does not mean to join in suffering, for that is what you must
refuse to understand. That is the ego’s interpretation of empathy and is
always used to form a special relationship in which the suffering is shared. The
capacity to empathize is very useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use
it in His way. He does not understand suffering and would have you teach it is
not understandable. When He relates through you, He does not relate through the
ego to another ego. He does not join in pain, knowing that healing pain is not
accomplished by delusional attempts to enter into it and lighten it by sharing the
delusion.
16:2
The clearest proof that empathy as the ego uses it is destructive lies in the
fact that it is applied only to certain types of problems and in certain people.
These it selects out and joins with. And it never joins except to strengthen itself.
Make no mistake about this maneuver; the ego always empathizes to weaken, and
to weaken is always to attack.You do not know what empathizing means.Yet of
this you may be sure—if you will merely sit quietly by and let the Holy Spirit
relate through you, you will empathize with strength and both of you will gain in
strength, and not in weakness.
3
Your part is only to remember this—you do not want anything you value to
come of the relationship. You will neither to hurt it nor to heal it in your own
way.You do not know what healing is. All you have learned of empathy is from
the past. And there is nothing from the past that you would share, for there is
nothing there that you would keep. Do not use empathy to make the past real and
so perpetuate it. Step gently aside and let the healing be done for you. Keep but
one thought in mind and do not lose sight of it, however tempted you may be
to judge any situation and to determine your response by judging it. Focus your
mind only on this:
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Empathy
Empathy
True empathy is of Him Who knows what it is.You will learn His interpretation
of it if you let Him use your capacity for strength and not for weakness. He will
not desert you, but be sure that you desert not him. Humility is strength in this
sense only—to recognize and accept the fact that you do not know is to recognize
and accept the fact that He does know.You are not sure that He will do His part
because you have never yet done yours completely. You will not know how to
respond to what you do not understand. Be tempted not in this, and yield not to
the ego’s triumphant use of empathy for its glory.
6
The triumph of weakness is not what you would offer to a brother. And yet
you know no triumph but this. This is not knowledge, and the form of empathy
that would bring this about is so distorted that it would imprison what it would
release. The unredeemed cannot redeem, yet they have a Redeemer. Attempt to
teach Him not. You are the learner; He the Teacher. Do not confuse your role
with His, for this will never bring peace to anyone. Offer your empathy to Him,
for it is His perception and His strength that you would share. And let Him offer
you His strength and His perception to be shared though you.
7
The meaning of love is lost in any relationship which looks to weakness and
hopes to find love there. The power of love, which is its meaning, lies in the
strength of God, which hovers over it and blesses it silently by enveloping it in
healing wings. Let this be, and do not try to substitute your “miracle” for this. We
once said that if a brother asks a foolish thing of you, to do it. But be certain
that this does not mean to do a foolish thing that would hurt either him or you,
for what would hurt one will hurt the other. Foolish requests are foolish for the
simple reason that they conflict because they contain an element of specialness.
Only the Holy Spirit recognizes foolish needs as well as real ones. And He will
teach you how to meet both without losing either.
8
You will attempt to do this only in secrecy. And you will think that, by meeting
the needs of one, you do not jeopardize another because you keep them separate
and secret from each other. That is not the way, for it leads not to light and truth.
No needs will long be left unmet if you leave them all to Him Whose function is to
meet them.That is His function and not yours. He will not meet them secretly, for
5
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iii. The
Chapter 16: THE FORGIVENESS OF ILLUSIONS
He would share everything you give through Him. And that is why He gives it.
9
What you give through Him is for the whole Sonship, not for part of it.
Leave Him His function, for He will fulfill it if you but ask Him to enter your
relationships and bless them for you.
iii. The
Magnitude
of
Holiness
You still think holiness is difficult because you cannot see how it can be
extended to include everyone. And you have learned that it must include
everyone to be holy. Concern yourselves not with the extension of holiness, for
the nature of miracles you do not understand. Nor do you do them. It is their
extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did not do
them. Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the Sonship when
you do not understand the miracle itself? One attribute is no more difficult to
understand than is the whole. If miracles are at all, their attributes would have to
be miraculous, being part of them.
11
There is a tendency to fragment and then to be concerned about the truth
of just a little part of the whole. And this is but a way of avoiding or looking away
from the whole to what you think you might be better able to understand. For
this is but another way in which you would still try to keep understanding to
yourself. A better and far more helpful way to think of miracles is this:You do not
understand them, either in part or whole.Yet you have done them. Therefore, your
understanding cannot be necessary.Yet it is still impossible to accomplish what you
do not understand. And so there must be something in you that does understand.
12
To you the miracle cannot seem natural because what you have done to hurt
your minds has made them so unnatural that they do not remember what is natural
to them.And when you are told about it, you cannot understand it.The recognition
of the part as whole and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural. For it is
the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you. Wholly natural
perception would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite
impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what miracles mean. And if you could
understand their meaning, their attributes could hardly cause you perplexity.
13
You have done miracles, but it is quite apparent that you have not done them
alone.You have succeeded whenever you have reached another mind and joined
with it. When two minds join as one and share one idea equally, the first link in
the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made. When you have made this
joining as the Holy Spirit bids you and have offered it to Him to use as He knows
10
320
Magnitude of Holiness
how, His natural perception of your gift enables Him to understand it and you
to use His understanding on your behalf. It is impossible to convince you of the
reality of what has clearly been accomplished through your willingness, as long
as you believe that you must understand it or else it is not real.
14
You think your lack of understanding is a loss to you, and so you are unwilling
to believe that what has happened is true. But can you really believe that all that
has happened, even though you do not understand it, has not happened? Yet this is
your position.You would have perfect faith in the Holy Spirit and in the effects
of His teaching if you were not afraid to acknowledge what He taught you. For this
acknowledgment means that what has happened you do not understand but that
you are willing to accept it because it has happened.
15
How can faith in reality be yours while you are bent on making it unreal?
And are you really safer in maintaining the unreality of what has happened than
you would be in joyously accepting it for what it is and giving thanks for it?
Honor the truth that has been given you, and be glad you do not understand it.
Miracles are natural to God and to the One Who speaks for Him. For His task is
to translate the miracle into the knowledge which it represents and which is lost
to you. Let His understanding of the miracle be enough for you, and do not turn
away from all the witnesses that He has given you to His reality.
16
No evidence will convince you of the truth of what you do not want. Yet
your relationship with Him is real and has been demonstrated. Regard this not
with fear but with rejoicing. The One you called upon is with you. Bid Him
welcome and honor His witnesses, who bring you the glad tidings He has come.
It is true, just as you fear, that to acknowledge Him is to deny all that you think
you know. But it was never true. What gain is there to you in clinging to it and
denying the evidence for truth? For you have come too near to truth to renounce
it now, and you will yield to its compelling attraction.You can delay this now but
only a little while. The host of God has called to you, and you have heard. Never
again will you be wholly willing not to listen.
17
This is a year of joy in which your listening will increase, and peace will
grow with its increase.The power of holiness and the weakness of attack have both
been brought into awareness. And this has been accomplished in minds firmly
convinced that holiness is weakness and attack is power. Should not this be a
sufficient miracle to teach you that your Teacher is not of you? But remember also
that whenever you have listened to His interpretation, the results have brought
you joy. Would you prefer the results of your interpretation, considering honestly
what they have been? God wills you better. Could you not look with greater
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iv. The
charity on whom God loves with perfect love?
18
Do not interpret against God’s Love, for you have many witnesses which
speak of it so clearly that only the blind and deaf could fail to see and hear them.
This year, determine not to deny what has been given you by God, for that is
the only reason He has called to you. His Voice has spoken clearly, and yet you
have so little faith in what you heard because you have preferred to place still
greater faith in the disaster you have made. Today let us resolve together to accept
the joyful tidings that disaster is not real and that reality is not disaster.
19
Reality is safe and sure and wholly kind to everyone and everything. There
is no greater love than to accept this and be glad. For love asks only that you
be happy and will give you everything that makes for happiness. You have never
given any problem to the Holy Spirit He has not solved for you, nor will you
ever do so.You have never tried to solve anything yourself and been successful. Is
it not time you brought these facts together and made sense of them?
20
This is the year for the application of the ideas which have been given you.
For the ideas are mighty forces to be used and not held idly by.They have already
proved their power sufficiently for you to place your faith in them and not in
their denial. This year invest in truth, and let it work in peace. Have faith in what
has faith in you. Think what you have really seen and heard and recognize it. Can
you be alone with witnesses like these?
iv. The
Reward
of Teaching
You have taught well, and yet you have not learned how to accept the comfort
of your teaching. If you will consider what you have taught and how alien it is
to what you thought you knew, you will be compelled to recognize that your
Teacher came from beyond your thought system and so could look upon it
fairly and perceive it was untrue. And He must have done so from the basis of
a very different thought system and one with nothing in common with yours.
For certainly what He has taught, and what you have taught through Him, have
nothing in common with what you taught before He came. And the results have
been to bring peace where there was pain, and suffering has disappeared, to be
replaced by joy.
22
You have taught freedom, but you have not learned how to be free. We once
said, “By their fruits ye shall know them, and they shall know themselves.” For it
is certain that you judge yourself according to your teaching. The ego’s teaching
produces immediate results because its decisions are immediately accepted as
21
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Reward of Teaching
your choice. And this acceptance means that you are willing to judge yourself
accordingly. Cause and effect are very clear in the ego’s thought system because all
your learning has been directed towards establishing the relationship between them.
And would you not have faith in what you have so diligently taught yourself to
believe? Yet remember how much care you have exerted in choosing its witnesses
and in avoiding those which spoke for the cause of truth and its effects.
23
Does not the fact that you have not learned what you have taught show you
that you do not perceive the Sonship as one? And does it not also show you that you
do not regard yourself as one? For it is impossible to teach successfully wholly without
conviction, and it is equally impossible that conviction be outside of you.You could
never have taught freedom unless you did believe in it. And it must be that what
you taught came from yourself. And yet, this Self you clearly do not know and do not
recognize It even though It functions. What functions must be there. And it is only
if you deny what It has done that you could possibly deny Its Presence.
24
This is a course in how to know yourself. You have taught what you are
but have not let what you are teach you. You have been very careful to avoid
the obvious and not to see the real cause and effect relationship that is perfectly
apparent.Yet within you is everything you taught.What can it be that has not learned
it? It must be this that is really outside yourself, not by your own projection, but
in truth. And it is this that you have taken in that is not you.What you accept into
your minds does not really change them. Illusions are but beliefs in what is not
there. And the seeming conflict between truth and illusion can only be resolved
by separating yourself from the illusion and not from truth.
25
Your teaching has already done this, for the Holy Spirit is part of you. Created
by God, He left neither God nor His creation. He is both God and you, as you are
God and Him together. For God’s answer to the separation added more to you
than you tried to take away. He protected both your creations and you together,
keeping one with you what you would exclude. And they will take the place
of what you took in to replace them. They are quite real as part of the Self you
do not know. And they communicate to you through the Holy Spirit, and their
power and gratitude to you for their creation they offer gladly to your teaching
of yourself, who is their home. You who are host to God are also host to them.
For nothing real has ever left the mind of its creator. And what is not real was
never there.
26
You are not two selves in conflict. What is beyond God? If you who hold
Him and whom He holds are the universe, all else must be outside, where nothing
is.You have taught this, and from far off in the universe, yet not beyond yourself,
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v. Illusion and
the witnesses to your teaching have gathered to help you learn. Their gratitude
has joined with yours and God’s to strengthen your faith in what you taught. For
what you taught is true. Alone you stand outside your teaching and apart from it.
But with them you must learn that you but taught yourself and learned from the
conviction you shared with them.
27
This year you will begin to learn and make learning commensurate with
teaching. You have chosen this by your own willingness to teach. Though you
seemed to suffer for it, the joy of teaching will yet be yours. For the joy of
teaching is in the learner, who offers it to the teacher in gratitude and shares it
with him. As you learn, your gratitude to your Self,Who teaches you what He is,
will grow and help you honor Him. And you will learn His power and strength
and purity, and love Him as His Father does. His Kingdom has no limits and no
end, and there is nothing in Him that is not perfect and eternal. All this is you,
and nothing outside of this is you.
28
To your most holy Self, all praise is due for what you are and for what He is
Who created you as you are. Sooner or later must everyone bridge the gap which
he imagines exists between his selves. Each one builds this bridge which carries
him across the gap as soon as he is willing to expend some little effort on behalf
of bridging it. His little efforts are powerfully supplemented by the strength of
Heaven and by the united will of all who make Heaven what it is, being joined
within it. And so the one who would cross over is literally transported there.
29
Your bridge is builded stronger than you think, and your foot is planted
firmly on it. Have no fear that the attraction of those who stand on the other side
and wait for you will not draw you safely across. For you will come where you
would be and where your Self awaits you.
v. Illusion and
Reality
of
Love
Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship, for freedom lies in
looking at it. It would be impossible not to know the meaning of love except
for this. For the special love relationship, in which the meaning of love is lost, is
undertaken solely to offset the hate but not to let it go. Your salvation will rise
clearly before your open eyes as you look on this. You cannot limit hate. The
special love relationship will not offset it but will merely drive it underground
and out of sight. It is essential to bring it into sight and to make no attempt to
hide it. For it is the attempt to balance hate with love that makes love meaningless
to you. The extent of the split that lies in this you do not realize. And until you
do, the split will remain unrecognized and therefore unhealed.
30
324
Reality of Love
The symbols of hate against the symbols of love play out a conflict which
does not exist. For symbols stand for something else, and the symbol of love is
without meaning if love is everything.You will go through this last undoing quite
unharmed and will at last emerge as yourself. This is the last step in the readiness
for God. Be not unwilling now.You are too near, and you will cross the bridge in
perfect safety, translated quietly from war to peace. For the illusion of love will never
satisfy, but its reality, which awaits you on the other side, will give you everything.
32
The special love relationship is an attempt to limit the destructive effects of
hate by finding a haven in the storm of guilt. It makes no attempt to rise above
the storm into the sunlight. On the contrary, it emphasizes guilt outside the haven
by attempting to build barricades against it and keep within them. The special
love relationship is not perceived as a value in itself, but as a place of safety from
which hatred is split off and kept apart.The special love partner is acceptable only
as long as he serves this purpose. Hatred can enter and indeed is welcome in some
aspects of the relationship, but it is still held together by the illusion of love. If the
illusion goes, the relationship is broken or becomes unsatisfying on the grounds
of disillusionment.
33
Love is not an illusion. It is a fact.Where disillusionment is possible, there was
not love but hate. For hate is an illusion, and what can change was never love. It is
certain that those who select certain ones as partners in any aspect of living and
use them for any purpose which they would not share with others, are trying to
live with guilt rather than die of it.This is the choice they see. And love to them is
only an escape from death.They seek it desperately but not in the peace in which
it would gladly come quietly to them. And when they find the fear of death is still
upon them, the love relationship loses the illusion that it is what it is not. For then
the barricades against it are broken, fear rushes in, and hatred triumphs.
34
There are no triumphs of love. Only hate is concerned with the “triumph of
love” at all. The illusion of love can triumph over the illusion of hate, but always
at the price of making both illusions. As long as the illusion of hatred lasts, so long
will love be an illusion to you. And then the only choice which remains possible
is which illusion you prefer. There is no conflict in the choice between truth and
illusion. Seen in these terms, no one would hesitate. But conflict enters the instant
the choice seems to be one between illusions, for this choice does not matter.Where
one choice is as dangerous as the other, the decision must be one of despair.
35
Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all of the barriers
within yourself which you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what
is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false. Every illusion is one of fear,
31
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vi. Specialness and
whatever form it takes. And the attempt to escape from one illusion into another
must fail. If you seek love outside yourself, you can be certain that you perceive
hatred within and are afraid of it.Yet peace will never come from the illusion of
love, but only from its reality.
36
Recognize this, for it is true, and truth must be recognized if it is to be
distinguished from illusion: The special love relationship is an attempt to bring
love into fear and make it real in fear. In fundamental violation of love’s condition,
the special love relationship would accomplish the impossible. How but in illusion
could this be done? It is essential that we look very closely at exactly what it is you
think you can do to solve the dilemma, which seems very real to you, but which
does not exist. You have come very close to truth, and only this stands between
you and the bridge that leads you into it.
37
Heaven waits silently, and your creations are holding out their hands to help
you cross and welcome them. For it is they you seek. You seek but for your own
completion, and it is they who render you complete.The special love relationship
is but a shabby substitute for what makes you whole in truth, not in illusion.
Your relationship with them is without guilt, and this enables you to look on all
your brothers with gratitude because your creations were created in union with
them. Acceptance of your creations is the acceptance of the oneness of creation,
without which you could never be complete. No specialness can offer you what
God has given and what you are joined with Him in giving.
38
Across the bridge is your completion, for you will be wholly in God, willing
for nothing special but only to be wholly like unto Him, completing Him by your
completion. Fear not to cross to the abode of peace and perfect holiness. Only
there is the completion of God and of His Son established forever. Seek not for
this in the bleak world of illusion, where nothing is certain, and where everything
fails to satisfy. In the Name of God, be wholly willing to abandon all illusions. In
any relationship in which you are wholly willing to accept completion, and only
this, there is God completed and His Son with Him.
39
The bridge that leads to union in yourself must lead to knowledge, for
it was built with God beside you and will lead you straight to Him, where
your completion rests wholly compatible with His. Every illusion which you
accept into your mind by judging it to be attainable removes your own sense of
completion and thus denies the wholeness of your Father. Every fantasy, be it of
love or hate, deprives you of knowledge, for fantasies are the veil behind which
truth is hidden. To lift the veil which seems so dark and heavy, it is only needful
to value truth beyond all fantasy and to be entirely unwilling to settle for illusion
326
Guilt
in place of truth.
40
Would you not go through fear to love? For such the journey seems to be.
Love calls, but hate would have you stay. Hear not the call of hate, and see no
fantasies. See in the call of hate and in every fantasy that rises to delay you but
the call for help which rises ceaselessly from you to your Creator. Would He not
answer you whose completion is His? He loves you wholly without illusion, as
you must love. For love is wholly without illusion and therefore wholly without
fear. Whom God remembers must be whole. And God has never forgotten what
makes Him whole. In your completion lies the memory of His wholeness and His
gratitude to you for His completion. In His link with you lie both His inability to
forget and your ability to remember. In Him are joined your willingness to love
and all the love of God, Who forgot you not.
41
Your Father can no more forget the truth in you than you can fail to remember
it. The Holy Spirit is the bridge to Him, made from your willingness to unite
with Him and created by His joy in union with you. The journey that seemed
to be endless is almost complete, for what is endless is very near.You have almost
recognized it. Turn with me firmly away from all illusions now, and let nothing
stand in the way of truth. We will take the last foolish journey away from truth
together, and then together we go straight to God in joyous answer to His call
for His completion.
42
If special relationships of any kind would hinder God’s completion, can they
have value to you? What would interfere with God must interfere with you. Only
in time does interference in God’s completion seem to be possible. The bridge
that He would carry you across lifts you from time into eternity. Waken from
time and answer fearlessly the call of Him Who gave eternity to you in your
creation. On this side of the bridge to timelessness you understand nothing. But
as you step lightly across it, upheld by timelessness, you are directed straight to the
Heart of God. At its center, and only there, you are safe forever because you are
complete forever. There is no veil the love of God in us together cannot lift. The
way to truth is open. Follow it with me.
vi.
Specialness
and
Guilt
In looking at the special relationship, it is necessary first to realize that it
involves a great amount of pain. Anxiety, despair, guilt, and attack all enter into
it, broken into by periods in which they seem to be gone. All these must be
understood for what they are. Whatever form they take, they are always an attack
on the self to make the other guilty. We have spoken of this before, but there are
43
327
some aspects of what is really being attempted that we have not touched upon.
44
Very simply, the attempt to make guilty is always directed against God. For
the ego would have you see Him, and Him alone, as guilty, leaving the Sonship
open to attack and unprotected from it. The special love relationship is the ego’s
chief weapon for keeping you from Heaven. It does not appear to be a weapon,
but it you consider how you value it and why, you will realize what it must be.
The special love relationship is the ego’s most boasted gift, and one which has
the most appeal to those unwilling to relinquish guilt. The “dynamics” of the
ego are clearest here, for counting on the attraction of this offering, the fantasies
which center around it are often quite open. Here they are usually judged to
be acceptable and even natural. No one considers it bizarre to love and hate
together, and even those who believe that hate is sin merely feel guilty and do
not correct it.
45
This is the “natural” condition of the separation, and those who learn that it
is not natural at all seem to be the unnatural ones. For this world is the opposite
of Heaven, being made to be its opposite, and everything here takes a direction
exactly opposite of what is true. In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known,
love is the same as union. Here, where the illusion of love is accepted in love’s
place, love is perceived as separation and exclusion.
46
It is in the special relationship, born of the hidden wish for special love from
God, that the ego’s hatred triumphs. For the special relationship is the renunciation
of the love of God and the attempt to secure for the self the specialness which
He denied. It is essential to the preservation of the ego that you believe this
specialness is not hell, but Heaven. For the ego would never have you see that
separation can only be loss, being the one condition in which Heaven cannot be.
47
To everyone Heaven is completion. There can be no disagreement on this
because both the ego and the Holy Spirit accept it. They are, however, in complete
disagreement on what completion is and how it is accomplished. The Holy Spirit
knows that completion lies first in union and then in the extension of union.To the
ego, completion lies in triumph and in the extension of the “victory” even to the
final triumph over God. In this it sees the ultimate freedom of the self, for nothing
would remain to interfere with it. This is its idea of Heaven. From this it follows that
union, which is a condition in which the ego cannot interfere, must be hell.
48
The special relationship is a strange and unnatural ego device for joining
hell and Heaven and making them indistinguishable. And the attempt to find the
imagined “best” of both worlds has merely led to fantasies of both and to the
inability to perceive either one as it is. The special relationship is the triumph of
328
vi. Specialness and
Guilt
this confusion. It is a kind of union from which union is excluded, and the basis
for the attempt at union rests on exclusion. What better example could there be
of the ego’s maxim, “Seek but do not find?”
49
Most curious of all is the concept of the self which the ego fosters in the
special relationship. This “self ” seeks the relationship to make itself complete.Yet
when it finds the special relationship in which it thinks it can accomplish this, it
gives itself away and tries to “trade” itself for the self of another.This is not union,
for there is no increase and no extension. Each partner tries to sacrifice the self
he does not want for one he thinks he would prefer. And he feels guilty for the
“sin” of taking and of giving nothing of value in return. For how much value can
he place upon a self that he would give away to get a better one?
50
The “better” self the ego seeks is always one that is more special. And whoever
seems to posses a special self is “loved” for what can be taken from him. Where
both partners see this special self in each other, the ego sees “a union made in
Heaven.” For neither one will recognize that he has asked for hell, and so he will
not interfere with the ego’s illusion of Heaven, which it offered him to interfere
with Heaven. Yet if all illusions are of fear, and they can be of nothing else, the
illusion of Heaven is nothing more than an “attractive” form of fear in which the
guilt is buried deep and rises in the form of “love.”
51
The appeal of hell lies only in the terrible attraction of guilt, which the ego
holds out to those who place their faith in littleness. The conviction of littleness
lies in every special relationship, for only the deprived could value specialness. The
demand for specialness and the perception of the giving of specialness as an act of
love would make love hateful. And the real purpose of the special relationship, in
strict accordance with the ego’s goals, is to destroy reality and substitute illusion. For
the ego is itself an illusion, and only illusions can be the witnesses to its “reality.”
52
If you perceived the special relationship as a triumph over God, would you
want it? Let us not think of its fearful nature nor of the guilt it must entail nor of
the sadness and the loneliness. For these are only attributes of the whole religion
of the separation and of the total context in which it is thought to occur. The
central theme in its litany to sacrifice is that God must die so you can live. And
it is this theme which is acted out in the special relationship. Through the death
of your self, you think you can attack another self and snatch it from the other to
replace the self which you despise. And you despise it because you do not think
it offers the specialness which you demand. And hating it, you have made it little
and unworthy because you are afraid of it.
53
How can you grant unlimited power to what you think you have attacked?
329
vii. The
So fearful has the truth become to you that unless it is weak and little, you would
not dare to look upon it. You think it safer to endow the little self which you
have made with power you wrested from truth, triumphing over it and leaving it
helpless. See how exactly is this ritual enacted in the special relationship. An altar
is erected in between two separate people on which each seeks to kill his self
and on his body raise another self which takes its power from his death. Over
and over and over this ritual is enacted. And it is never completed nor ever will be
completed. For the ritual of completion cannot complete, and life arises not from
death, nor Heaven from hell.
54
Whenever any form of special relationship tempts you to seek for love in
ritual, remember love is content and not form of any kind.The special relationship
is a ritual of form, aimed at the raising of the form to take the place of God at the
expense of content.There is no meaning in the form, and there will never be.The
special relationship must be recognized for what it is—a senseless ritual in which
strength is extracted from the death of God and invested in His killer as the sign
that form has triumphed over content and love has lost its meaning. Would you
want this to be possible, even apart from its evident impossibility? For if it were
possible, you would have made yourself helpless. God is not angry. He merely
could not let this happen.You cannot change His Mind.
55
No rituals that you have set up in which the dance of death delights you can
bring death to the eternal. Nor can your chosen substitute for the wholeness of
God have any influence at all upon it. See in the special relationship nothing more
than a meaningless attempt to raise other gods before Him and by worshiping
them to obscure their tininess and His greatness. In the name of your completion,
you do not want this. For every idol which you raise to place before Him stands
before you in place of what you are.
56
Salvation lies in the simple fact that illusions are not fearful because they are
not true. They but seem to be fearful to the extent to which you fail to recognize
them for what they are, and you will fail to do this to the extent to which you
want them to be true. And to the same extent you are denying truth, and so are
making yourself unable to make the simple choice between truth and illusion,
God and fantasy. Remember this and you will have no difficulty in perceiving the
decision as just what it is and nothing more.
57
The core of the separation delusion lies simply in the fantasy of destruction
of love’s meaning. And unless love’s meaning is restored to you, you cannot know
yourself, who shares its meaning. Separation is only the decision not to know
yourself. Its whole thought system is a carefully contrived learning experience
330
Bridge to the Real World
designed to lead away from truth and into fantasy. Yet for every learning that
would hurt you, God offers you correction and complete escape from all its
consequences. The decision whether or not to listen to this course and follow
it is but the choice between truth and illusion. For here is truth separated from
illusion and not confused with it at all.
58
How simple does this choice become when it is perceived as only what it
is. For only fantasies made confusion in choosing possible, and they are totally
unreal.This year is thus the time to make the easiest decision that ever confronted
you and also the only one. You will cross the bridge into reality simply because
you will recognize that God is on the other side and nothing at all is here. It is
impossible not to make the natural decision as this is realized.
vii. The
Bridge
to the
Real World
The search for the special relationship is the sign that you equate yourself
with the ego and not with God. For the special relationship has value only to
the ego. To the ego unless a relationship has special value, it has no meaning,
and it perceives all love as special. Yet this cannot be natural, for it is unlike the
relationship of God and His Son, and all relationships that are unlike this one must
be unnatural. For God created love as He would have it be and gave it as it is.
Love has no meaning except as its Creator defined it by His Will. It is impossible
to define it otherwise and understand it.
60
Love is freedom. To look for it by placing yourself in bondage is to separate
yourself from it. For the love of God, no longer seek for union in separation nor
for freedom in bondage! As you release, so will you be released. Forget this not,
or love will be unable to find you and comfort you. There is a way in which
the Holy Spirit asks your help if you would have His. The holy instant is His
most helpful tool in protecting you from the attraction of guilt, the real lure in
the special relationship. You do not recognize that this is its real appeal, for the
ego has taught you that freedom lies in it. Yet the closer you look at the special
relationship, the more apparent it becomes that it must foster guilt and therefore
must imprison.
61
The special relationship is totally without meaning without a body. And if
you value it, you must also value the body. And what you value, you will keep.The
special relationship is a device for limiting your self to a body and for limiting
your perception of others to theirs. The Great Rays would establish the total lack
of value of the special relationship if they were seen. For in seeing them, the body
would disappear because its value would be lost. And so your whole investment in
59
331
vii. The
seeing it would be withdrawn from it.You see the world you value.
62
On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies seeking
to join each other in separate unions and to become one by losing. When two
individuals seek to become one, they are trying to decrease their magnitude. Each
would deny his power, for the separate union excludes the universe. Far more is
left outside than would be taken in. For God is left without and nothing taken in.
If one such union were made in perfect faith, the universe would enter into it.Yet
the special relationship which the ego seeks does not include even one whole
individual. For the ego wants but part of him and sees only this part and nothing
else.
63
Across the bridge, it is so different! For a time the body is still seen but not
exclusively, as it is seen here. For the little spark which holds the Great Rays
within it is also visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness. Once
you have crossed the bridge, the value of the body is so diminished in your sight
that you will see no need at all to magnify it. For you will realize that the only
value which the body has is to enable you to bring your brothers to the bridge
with you and to be released together there.
64
The bridge itself is nothing more than a transition in your perspective of
reality. On this side, everything you see is grossly distorted and completely out of
perspective. What is little and insignificant is magnified, and what is strong and
powerful cut down to littleness. In the transition there is a period of confusion
in which a sense of actual disorientation seems to occur. But fear it not, for it
means nothing more than that you have been willing to let go your hold on the
distorted frame of reference which seemed to hold your world together. This
frame of reference is built around the special relationship. Without this illusion,
there can be no meaning you would still seek here.
65
Fear not that you will be abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality. Time
is kind, and if you use it for reality, it will keep gentle pace with you in your
transition.The urgency is only in dislodging your minds from their fixed position
here. This will not leave you homeless and without a frame of reference. The
period of disorientation which precedes the actual transition is far shorter than
the time it took to fix your minds so firmly on illusions. Delay will hurt you now
more than before only because you realize it is delay and that escape from pain is
really possible. Find hope and comfort rather than despair in this: You could no
longer find even the illusion of love in any special relationship here. For you are
no longer wholly insane, and you would recognize the guilt of self-betrayal for
what it is.
332
Bridge to the Real World
Nothing you seek to strengthen in the special relationship is really part of
you. And you cannot keep part of the thought system which taught you it was
real and understand the Thought that really knows what you are.You have allowed
the Thought of your reality to enter your minds, and because you invited it, it
will abide with you. Your love for it will not allow you to betray yourself, and
you could not enter into a relationship where it could not go with you, for you
would not be apart from it.
67
Be glad you have escaped the mockery of salvation which the ego offered
you and look not back with longing on the travesty it made of your relationships.
Now no one need suffer, for you have come too far to yield to the illusion of
the beauty and holiness of guilt. Only the wholly insane could look on death
and suffering, sickness and despair and see it thus. What guilt has wrought is ugly,
fearful, and very dangerous. See no illusion of truth and beauty there. And be you
thankful that there is a place where truth and beauty wait for you. Go on to meet
them gladly, and learn how much awaits you for the simple willingness to give
up nothing because it is nothing.
68
The new perspective you will gain from crossing over will be the understanding
of where Heaven is. From here it seems to be outside and across the bridge. Yet
as you cross to join it, it will join with you and become one with you. And you
will think in glad astonishment that for all this you gave up nothing! The joy of
Heaven, which has no limit, is increased with each light that returns to take its
rightful place within it. Wait no longer, for the love of God and you. And may
the holy instant speed you on the way, as it will surely do if you but let it come
to you.
69
The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you. Whenever your thoughts
wander to a special relationship which still attracts you, enter with Him into a
holy instant and there let Him release you. He needs only your willingness to
share His perspective to give it to you completely. And your willingness need not
be complete because His is perfect. It is His task to atone for your unwillingness
by His perfect faith, and it is His faith you share with Him there. Out of your
recognition of your unwillingness for your release, His perfect willingness is given
you. Call upon Him, for Heaven is at His call. And let Him call on Heaven for
you.
66
333
viii. The
viii. The
End
of Illusions
It is impossible to let the past go without relinquishing the special
relationship. For the special relationship is an attempt to reenact the past and change
it. Imagined slights, remembered pain, past disappointments, perceived injustices,
and deprivations all enter into the special relationship, which becomes a way
in which you seek to restore your wounded self-esteem. What basis would you
have for choosing a special partner without the past? Every such choice is made
because of something “evil” in the past to which you cling and for which must
someone else atone.
71
The special relationship takes vengeance on the past. By seeking to remove
suffering in the past, it overlooks the present in its preoccupation with the past
and its total commitment to it. No special relationship is experienced in the
present. Shades of the past envelop it and make it what it is. It has no meaning
in the present, and if it means nothing now, it cannot have any real meaning at
all. How can you change the past except in fantasy? And who can give you what
you think the past deprived you of? The past is nothing. Do not seek to lay the
blame for deprivation on it, for the past is gone.You cannot really not let go what
has already gone. It must be, therefore, that you are maintaining the illusion that
it has not gone because you think it serves some purpose that you want fulfilled.
And it must also be that this purpose could not be fulfilled in the present, but only
in the past.
72
Do not underestimate the intensity of the ego’s drive for vengeance on
the past. It is completely savage and completely insane. For the ego remembers
everything that you have done which offended it and seeks retribution of you.
The fantasies it brings to the special relationships it chooses in which to act out
its hate are fantasies of your destruction. For the ego holds the past against you,
and in your escape from the past, it sees itself deprived of the vengeance it believes
that you so justly merit. Yet without your alliance in your own destruction, the
ego could not hold you to the past.
73
In the special relationship, you are allowing your destruction to be. That this
is insane is obvious. But what is less obvious to you is that the present is useless
to you while you pursue the ego’s goal as its ally. The past is gone; seek not to
preserve it in the special relationship, which binds you to it and would teach you
that salvation is past and that you must return to the past to find salvation. There
is no fantasy which does not contain the dream of retribution for the past.Would
you act out the dream or let it go?
74
In the special relationship, it does not seem to be an acting out of vengeance
70
334
End of Illusions
which you seek. And even when the hatred and the savagery break briefly through
into awareness, the illusion of love is not profoundly shaken. Yet the one thing
which the ego never allows to reach awareness is that the special relationship is
the acting out of vengeance on yourself. But what else could it be? In seeking the
special relationship, you look not for glory in yourself. You have denied that it is
there, and the relationship becomes your substitute for it. And vengeance becomes
your substitute for Atonement, and the escape from vengeance becomes your loss.
75
Against the ego’s insane notion of salvation, the Holy Spirit gently lays the
holy instant.We said before that the Holy Spirit must teach through comparisons
and uses opposites to point to truth. The holy instant is the opposite of the ego’s
fixed belief in salvation through vengeance for the past. In the holy instant, it is
accepted that the past is gone, and with its passing the drive for vengeance has
been uprooted and has disappeared. The stillness and the peace of now enfolds
you in perfect gentleness. Everything is gone except the truth.
76
For a time you may attempt to bring illusions into the holy instant to
hinder your full awareness of the complete difference in all respects between your
experience of truth and illusion. Yet you will not attempt this long. In the holy
instant, the power of the Holy Spirit will prevail because you joined Him. The
illusions you bring with you will weaken the experience of Him for a while and
will prevent you from keeping the experience in your mind.Yet the holy instant
is eternal, and your illusions of time will not prevent the timeless from being
what it is nor you from experiencing it as it is.
77
What God has given you is truly given and will be truly received. For God’s
gifts have no reality apart from your receiving them. Your receiving completes
His giving.You will receive because it is His Will to give. He gave the holy instant
to be given you, and it is impossible that you receive it not, because He gave it.
When He willed that His Son be free, His Son was free. In the holy instant is His
reminder that His Son will always be exactly as he was created. And everything
the Holy Spirit teaches you is to remind you that you have received what God
has given you.
78
There is nothing you can hold against reality. All that must be forgiven are the
illusions you have held against your brothers. Their reality has no past, and only
illusions can be forgiven. God holds nothing against anyone, for He is incapable of
illusions of any kind. Release your brothers from the slavery of their illusions by
forgiving them for the illusions which you perceive in them. Thus will you learn
that you have been forgiven, for it is you who offered them illusions. In the holy
instant, this is done for you in time to bring to you the true condition of Heaven.
335
Remember that you always choose between truth and illusion—between
the real Atonement which would heal and the ego’s “atonement” which would
destroy. The power of God and all His Love, without limit, will support you as
you seek only your place in the plan of Atonement arising from His Love. Be an
ally of God and not the ego in seeking how Atonement can come to you. His
help suffices, for His Messenger understands how to restore the Kingdom to you
and to place all your investment in salvation in your relationship with Him.
80
Seek and find his message in the holy instant, where all illusions are forgiven.
From there the miracle extends to bless everyone and to resolve all problems, be
they perceived as great or small, possible or impossible. There is nothing that will
not give place to Him and to His majesty. To join in close relationship with Him
is to accept relationships as real and through their reality to give over all illusions
for the reality of your relationship with God. Praise be to your relationship with
Him and to no other. The truth lies here and nowhere else. You choose this or
nothing.
79
Forgive us our illusions, Father, and help us to accept our true relationship
with You in which there are no illusions and where none can ever enter. Our
holiness is Yours. What can there be in us that needs forgiveness when Yours
is perfect? The sleep of forgetfulness is only the unwillingness to remember
Your forgiveness and Your Love. Let us not wander into temptation, for the
temptation of the Son of God is not Your Will. And let us receive only what
you have given and accept but this into the minds which You created and
which You love. Amen.
81
seventeen
Forgiveness and Healing
i.
Introduction
T
he betrayal of the Son of God lies only in illusions, and all his “sins”
are but his own imagining. His reality is forever sinless. He need not be
forgiven, but awakened. In his dreams he has betrayed himself, his brothers, and
his God.Yet what is done in dreams has not been really done. It is impossible to
convince the dreamer that this is so, for dreams are what they are because of their
illusion of reality. Only in waking is the full release from them, for only then
does it become perfectly apparent that they had no effect on reality at all and did
not change it. Fantasies change reality. That is their purpose. They cannot do so in
reality, but they can do so in the mind that would have reality different.
17:2
It is, then, only your wish to change reality that is fearful because by your
wish you think you have accomplished what you wish. This strange position in
a sense acknowledges your power. Yet by distorting it and devoting it to “evil,”
it also makes it unreal. You cannot be faithful to two masters who ask of you
conflicting things.What you use in fantasy you deny to truth.Yet what you give to
truth to use for you is safe from fantasy.
ii.
Fantasy
and
Distorted Perception
When you maintain that there must be order of difficulty in miracles, all you
mean is that there are some things you would withhold from truth. You believe
that truth cannot deal with them only because you would keep them from truth.
Very simply, your lack of faith in the power that heals all pain arises from your
wish to retain some aspects of reality for fantasy. If you but realized what this must
do to your appreciation of the whole! What you reserve unto yourself, you take
away from Him Who would release you. Unless you give it back, it is inevitable
that your perspective on reality be warped and uncorrected.
3
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Chapter 17: FORGIVENESS AND HEALING
As long as you would have it so, so long will the illusion of order of difficulty
in miracles remain with you. For you have established this order in reality by
giving some of it to one teacher and some to another. And so you learn to deal
with part of truth in one way and in another way the other part. To fragment
truth is to destroy it by rendering it meaningless. Orders of reality is a perspective
without understanding, a frame of reference for reality to which it cannot really
be compared at all.
5
Think you that you can bring truth to fantasy and learn what truth means
from the perspective of illusions? Truth has no meaning in illusion. The frame of
reference for its meaning must be itself. When you try to bring truth to illusions,
you are trying to make illusions real and keep them by justifying your belief in
them. But to give illusions to truth is to enable truth to teach that the illusions
are unreal and thus enable you to escape from them. Reserve not one idea aside
from truth, or you establish orders of reality which must imprison you. There is
no order in reality because everything there is true.
6
Be willing, then, to give all you have held outside the truth to Him who knows
the truth and in Whom all is brought to truth. Be not concerned with anything
except your willingness to have this be accomplished. He will accomplish it; not
you. But forget not this:When you become disturbed and lose your peace of mind
because another is attempting to solve his problems through fantasy, you are refusing
to forgive yourself for just this same attempt. And you are holding both of you away
from truth and from salvation. As you forgive him, you restore to truth what was
denied by both of you. And you will see forgiveness where you have given it.
4
iii. The
Forgiven World
Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you? In no
fantasy have you ever seen anything so lovely. Nothing you see here, sleeping or
waking, comes near to such loveliness. And nothing will you value like unto this
nor hold so dear. Nothing that you remember that made your heart seem to sing
with joy has ever brought you even a little part of the happiness this sight will
bring you. For you will see the Son of God. You will behold the beauty which
the Holy Spirit loves to look upon and which He thanks the Father for. He
was created to see this for you until you learn to see it for yourself. And all His
teaching leads to seeing it and giving thanks with Him.
8
This loveliness is not a fantasy. It is the real world, bright and clean and new
with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for
everything has been forgiven, and there are no fantasies to hide the truth. The
7
338
iii. The
Forgiven World
bridge between that world and this is so little and so easy to cross that you could
not believe it is the meeting place of worlds so different. Yet this little bridge is
the strongest thing that touches on this world at all. This little step, so small it has
escaped your notice, is a stride through time into eternity and beyond all ugliness
into beauty that will enchant you and will never cease to cause you wonderment
at its perfection.
9
This step, the smallest ever taken by anything, is still the greatest accomplishment
of all in God’s plan of Atonement. All else is learned, but this is given, complete and
wholly perfect. No one but Him Who planned salvation could complete it thus.
The real world, in its loveliness, you learn to reach. Fantasies are all undone, and no
one and nothing remains still bound by them, and by your own forgiveness, you are
free to see.Yet what you see is only what you have made, with the blessing of your
forgiveness on it. And with this final blessing of God’s Son upon himself, the real
perception, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose.
10
The stars will disappear in light, and the sun which opened up the world to
beauty will vanish. Perception will be meaningless when it has been perfected,
for everything that has been used for learning will have no function. Nothing
will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations which made
perception possible will occur. The perception of the real world will be so short
that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last
step swiftly when you have reached the real world and have been made ready for
Him.
11
The real world is attained simply by the complete forgiveness of the old,
the world you see without forgiveness. The Great Transformer of perception will
undertake with you the careful searching of the mind that made this world and
uncover to you the seeming reasons for your making it. In the light of the real
reason which He brings, as you follow Him, He will show you that there is no
reason here at all. Each spot His reason touches grows alive with beauty, and
what seemed ugly in the darkness of your lack of reason is suddenly released to
loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity could be without a
hidden spark of beauty which gentleness could release.
12
All this beauty will rise to bless your sight as you look upon the world with
forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally transforms vision and lets you see the real
world reaching quietly and gently across chaos and removing all illusions which
had twisted your perception and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes
a thing of wonder and a blade of grass a sign of God’s perfection. From the
forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily into his home. And there he knows
339
iv. Shadows of the
that he has always rested there in peace. Even salvation will become a dream and
vanish from his mind. For salvation is the end of dreams and with the closing of
the dream will have no meaning. Who awake in Heaven could dream that there
could ever be need of salvation?
13
How much do you want salvation? It will give you the real world, trembling
with readiness to be given you.The eagerness of the Holy Spirit to give you this is
so intense He would not wait, although He waits in patience. Meet His patience
with your impatience at delay in meeting Him. Go out in gladness to meet with
your Redeemer and walk with him in trust out of this world and into the real
world of beauty and forgiveness.
iv.
Shadows
of the
Past
To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the
past and those that were given you. All the rest must be forgotten. Forgiveness is
a selective remembering, based not on your selection. For the shadow figures you
would make immortal are “enemies” of reality. Be willing to forgive the Son of
God for what he did not do.The shadow figures are the witnesses you bring with
you to demonstrate he did what he did not. Because you brought them, you will
hear them. And you who kept them by your own selection do not understand
how they came into your minds and what their purpose is.
15
They represent the evil that you think was done to you.You bring them with
you only that you may return evil for evil, hoping that their witness will enable
you to think guiltily of another and not harm yourself. They speak so clearly for
the separation that no one not obsessed with keeping separation could hear them.
They offer you the “reasons” why you should enter into unholy alliances which
support the ego’s goals and make your relationships the witness to its power. It is
these shadow figures which would make the ego holy in your sight and teach you
what you do to keep it safe is really love.
16
The shadow figures always speak for vengeance, and all relationships into
which they enter are totally insane. Without exception, these relationships have
as their purpose the exclusion of the truth about the other and of yourself. This is
why you see in both what is not there and make of both the slaves of vengeance.
And why whatever reminds you of your past grievances, no matter how distorted
the associations by which you arrive at the remembrance may be, attracts you and
seems to you to go by the name of love. And finally why all such relationships
become the attempt at union through the body, for only bodies can be seen as
means for vengeance.That bodies are central to all unholy relationships is evident.
14
340
Past
Your own experience has taught you this. But what you do not realize are all the
reasons which go to make the relationship unholy. For unholiness seeks to reinforce
itself, as holiness does, by gathering to itself what it perceives as like itself.
17
In the unholy relationship, it is not the body of the other with which union is
attempted but the bodies of those who are not there. Even the body of the other,
already a severely limited perception of him, is not the central focus as it is or
in entirety. What can be used for fantasies of vengeance and what can be most
readily associated with those on whom vengeance is really sought are centered on
and separated off as being the only parts of value. Every step taken in the making,
the maintaining, and the breaking off of the unholy relationship is a move toward
further fragmentation and unreality. The shadow figures enter more and more,
and the one in whom they seem to be decreases in importance.
18
Time is indeed unkind to the unholy relationship. For time is cruel in the
ego’s hands, as it is kind when used for gentleness. The attraction of the unholy
relationship begins to fade and to be questioned almost at once. Once it is
formed, doubt must enter in because its purpose is impossible. The only such
relationships which retain the fantasies that center on them are those which have
been dreamed of but have not been made at all. Where no reality has entered,
there is nothing to intrude upon the dream of happiness.Yet consider what this
means—the more reality that enters into the unholy relationship, the less satisfying
it becomes. And the more the fantasies can encompass, the greater the satisfaction
seems to be.
19
The “ideal” of the unholy relationship thus becomes one in which the reality
of the other does not enter at all to “spoil” the dream. And the less the other really
brings to it, the “better” it becomes. Thus, the attempt at union becomes a way
of excluding even the one with whom the union was sought. For it was formed
to get him out of it and join with fantasies in uninterrupted “bliss.” How can the
Holy Spirit bring His interpretation of the body as a means of communication
into relationships whose only purpose is separation from reality? What forgiveness
is enables Him to do so.
20
If all but loving thoughts has been forgotten, what remains is eternal. And the
transformed past is made like the present. No longer does the past conflict with
now. This continuity extends the present by increasing its reality and its value in
your perception of it. In these loving thoughts is the spark of beauty hidden in
the ugliness of the unholy relationship in which the hatred is remembered, yet
there to come alive as the relationship is given to Him Who gives it life and beauty.
That is why Atonement centers on the past, which is the source of separation, and
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v. Perception and the Two Worlds
where it must be undone. For separation must be corrected where it was made.
The ego seeks to “resolve” its problems, not at their source, but where they were
not made. And thus it seeks to guarantee there will be no solution.
21
The Holy Spirit wills only to make His resolutions complete and perfect,
and so He seeks and finds the source of problems where it is and there undoes it.
And with each step in His undoing is the separation more and more undone and
union brought closer. He is not at all confused by any “reasons” for separation.
All He perceives in separation is that it must be undone. Let Him uncover the
hidden spark of beauty in your relationships and show it to you. Its loveliness will
so attract you that you will be unwilling ever to lose the sight of it again. And
you will let it transform the relationship so you can see it more and more. For
you will want it more and more and become increasingly unwilling to let it be
hidden from you. And you will learn to seek for and establish conditions in which
this beauty can be seen.
22
All this you will do gladly if you but let Him hold the spark before you to
light your way and make it clear to you. God’s Son is one.Whom God has joined
as one, the ego cannot break apart. The spark of holiness must be safe, however
hidden it may be, in every relationship. For the Creator of the one relationship
has left no part of it without Himself.
23
This is the only part of the relationship the Holy Spirit sees because He
knows that only this is true.You have made the relationship unreal and therefore
unholy by seeing it where it is not and as it is not. Give the past to Him Who can
change your mind about it for you. But first be sure you fully realize what you
have made the past to represent and why.
24
In brief, the past is now your justification for entering into a continuing,
unholy alliance with the ego against the present. For the present is forgiveness.
Therefore, the relationships which the unholy alliance dictates are not perceived
nor felt as now. Yet the frame of reference to which the present is referred for
meaning is an illusion of the past in which those elements which fit the purpose
of the unholy alliance are retained and all the rest let go. And what is thus let go
is all the truth the past could ever offer to the present as witnesses for its reality,
while what is kept but witnesses to the reality of dreams.
25
It is still up to you to choose to be willing to join with truth or illusion.
But remember that to choose one is to let the other go. Which one you choose,
you will endow with beauty and reality because the choice depends on which
you value more. The spark of beauty or the veil of ugliness, the real world or the
world of guilt and fear, truth or illusion, freedom or slavery—it is all the same.
342
For you can never choose except between God and the ego. Thought systems are
but true or false, and all their attributes come simply from what they are. Only
the Thoughts of God are true. And all that follows from them comes from what
they are and is as true as is the holy Source from which they came.
26
My holy brothers, I would enter into all your relationships and step between
you and your fantasies. Let my relationship to you be real to you, and let me bring
reality to your perception of your brothers. They were not created to enable you
to hurt yourselves through them. They were created to create with you. This is
the truth that I would interpose between you and your goal of madness. Be not
separate from me, and let not the holy purpose of Atonement be lost to you in
dreams of vengeance. Relationships in which such dreams are cherished have
excluded me. Let me enter in the Name of God and bring you peace that you
may offer peace to me.
v.
Perception
and the Two Worlds
God established His relationship with you to make you happy, and nothing
you do which does not share His purpose can be real. The purpose God ascribed
to anything is its only function. Because of His reason for creating His relationship
with you, the function of relationships became forever “to make happy.” And nothing
else. To fulfill this function, you relate to your creations as God to His. For nothing
God created is apart from happiness, and nothing God created but would extend
happiness as its Creator did. Whatever fulfills this function not cannot be real.
28
In this world it is impossible to create, yet it is possible to make happy. We
have said repeatedly that the Holy Spirit would not deprive you of your special
relationships but would transform them. And by that all that is meant is that He
will restore to them the function given them by God. The function you have
given them is clearly not to make happy. But the holy relationship shares God’s
purpose, rather than aiming to make a substitute for it. Every special relationship
which you have made is a substitute for God’s Will and glorifies yours instead of
His because of the delusion that they are different.
29
You have made very real relationships even in this world which you do not
recognize simply because you have raised their substitutes to such predominance
that when truth calls to you, as it does constantly, you answer with a substitute.
Every special relationship which you have ever undertaken has as its fundamental
purpose the aim of occupying your minds so completely that you will not hear
the call of truth. In a sense the special relationship was the ego’s answer to the
creation of the Holy Spirit,Who was God’s answer to the separation. For although
27
343
the ego did not understand what had been created, it was aware of threat.
30
The whole defense system which the ego evolved to protect the separation
from the Holy Spirit was in response to the gift with which God blessed it and
by His blessing enabled it to be healed. This blessing holds within itself the truth
about everything. And the truth is that the Holy Spirit is in close relationship
with you because in Him is your relationship with God restored to you. The
relationship with Him has never been broken because the Holy Spirit has not
been separate from anyone since the separation. And through Him have all your
holy relationships been carefully preserved to serve God’s purpose for you.
31
The ego is hyperalert to threat, and the part of your mind into which the
ego was accepted is very anxious to preserve its reason as it sees it. It does not
realize that it is totally insane. And you must realize just what this means if you
would be restored to sanity. The insane protect their thought systems, but they
do so insanely. And all their defenses are as insane as what they are supposed to
protect.The separation has nothing in it, no part, no “reason,” and no attribute that
is not insane. And its “protection” is part of it, as insane as the whole. The special
relationship, which is its chief defense, must therefore be insane.
32
You have but little difficulty now in realizing that the thought system which
the special relationship protects is but a system of delusions.You recognize, at least
in general terms, that the ego is insane. Yet the special relationship still seems to
you somehow to be “different.”Yet we have looked at it far closer than at many
other aspects of the ego’s thought system which you have been more willing to
let go. While this one remains, you will not let the others go. For this one is not
different. Retain this one, and you have retained the whole.
33
It is essential to realize that all defenses do what they would defend. The
underlying basis for their effectiveness is that they offer what they defend. What
they defend is placed in them for safekeeping, and as they operate, they bring it
to you. Every defense operates by giving gifts, and the gift is always a miniature
of the thought system the defense protects, set in a golden frame. The frame is
very elaborate, all set with jewels and deeply carved and polished. Its purpose is
to be of value in itself and to divert your attention from what it encloses. But the
frame without the picture you cannot have. Defenses operate to make you think
you can.
34
The special relationship has the most imposing and deceptive frame of all the
defenses the ego uses. Its thought system is offered here, surrounded by a frame so
heavy and so elaborate that the picture is almost obliterated by its imposing structure.
Into the frame are woven all sorts of fanciful and fragmented illusions of love, set
344
v. Perception and the Two Worlds
with dreams of sacrifice and self-aggrandizement and interlaced with gilded threads
of self-destruction. The glitter of blood shines like rubies, and the tears are faceted
like diamonds and gleam in the dim light in which the offering is made.
35
Look at the picture. Do not let the frame distract you. This gift is given you
for your damnation, and if you take it, you will believe that you are damned.You
cannot have the frame without the picture. What you value is the frame, for there
you see no conflict.Yet the frame is only the wrapping for the gift of conflict.The
frame is not the gift. Be not deceived by the most superficial aspects of this thought
system, for these aspects enclose the whole, complete in every aspect. Death lies
in this glittering gift. Let not your gaze dwell on the hypnotic gleaming of the
frame. Look at the picture, and realize that death is offered you.
36
That is why the holy instant is so important in the defense of truth.The truth
itself needs no defense, but you do need defense against your own acceptance of
the gift of death. When you who are truth accept an idea so dangerous to truth,
you threaten truth with destruction. And your defense must now be undertaken
to keep truth whole. The power of Heaven, the love of God, the tears of Christ,
and the joy of His eternal Spirit are marshaled to defend you from your own
attack. For you attack Them, being part of Them, and They must save you, for
They love Themselves.
37
The holy instant is a miniature of Heaven, sent you from Heaven. It is a
picture, too, set in a frame. Yet if you accept this gift, you will not see the frame
at all because the gift can only be accepted through your willingness to focus all
your attention on the picture. The holy instant is a miniature of eternity. It is a
picture of timelessness, set in a frame of time. If you focus on the picture, you will
realize that it was only the frame that made you think it was a picture. Without
the frame, the picture is seen as what it represents. For as the whole thought system
of the ego lies in its gifts, so the whole of Heaven lies in this instant, borrowed
from eternity and set in time for you.
38
Two gifts are offered you. Each is complete and cannot be partially accepted.
Each is a picture of all that you can have, seen very differently.You cannot compare
their value by comparing a picture to a frame. It must be the pictures only that
you compare, or the comparison is wholly without meaning. Remember that it
is the picture that is the gift. And only on this basis are you really free to choose.
Look at the pictures. Both of them. One is a tiny picture, hard to see at all beneath
the heavy shadows of its enormous and disproportionate enclosure. The other is
lightly framed and hung in light, lovely to look upon for what it is.
39
You who have tried so hard and are still trying to fit the better picture into
345
the wrong frame and so combine what cannot be combined, accept this and be
glad: these pictures are each framed perfectly for what they represent. One is
framed to be out of focus and not seen. The other is framed for perfect clarity.
The picture of darkness and of death grows less convincing as you search it out
amid its wrappings. As each senseless stone which seems to shine in darkness from
the frame is exposed to light, it becomes dull and lifeless and ceases to distract
you from the picture. And finally you look upon the picture itself, seeing at last
that, unprotected by the frame, it has no meaning.
40
The other picture is lightly framed, for time cannot contain eternity.There is
no distraction here.The picture of Heaven and eternity grows more convincing as
you look at it. And now by real comparison a transformation of both pictures can
at last occur. And each is given its rightful place, when both are seen in relation
to each other. The dark picture brought to light is not perceived as fearful, but
the fact that it is just a picture is brought home at last. And what you see there, you
will recognize as what it is—a picture of what you thought was real and nothing
more. For beyond this picture, you will see nothing.
41
The picture of light, in clear cut and unmistakable contrast, is transformed
into what lies beyond the picture. As you look on this, you realize that it is not a
picture but a reality.This is no figured representation of a thought system, but the
Thought Itself. What it represents is there. The frame fades gently, and God rises
to your remembrance, offering you the whole of creation in exchange for your
little picture, wholly without value and entirely deprived of meaning.
42
As God ascends into His rightful place and you to yours, you will experience
again the meaning of relationship and know it to be true. Let us ascend in peace
together to the Father by giving Him ascendance in our minds. We will gain
everything by giving Him the power and the glory and keeping no illusions of
where they are. They are in us through His ascendance. What He has given is
His. It shines in every part of Him as in the whole. The whole reality of your
relationship with Him lies in our relationship to one another. The holy instant
shines alike on all relationships, for in it they are one. For here is only healing,
already complete and perfect. For here is God, and where He is, only the perfect
and complete can be.
vi. The
Healed Relationship
The holy relationship is the expression of the holy instant in living in this
world. Like everything about salvation, the holy instant is a practical device,
witnessed to by its results. The holy instant never fails. The experience of it is
43
346
vi. The
Healed Relationship
always felt. Yet without expression, it is not remembered. The holy relationship is
a constant reminder of the experience in which the relationship became what
it is. And as the unholy relationship is a continuing hymn of hate in praise of
its maker, so is the holy relationship a happy song of praise to the Redeemer of
relationships.
44
The holy relationship, a major step toward the perception of the real world,
is learned. It is the old unholy relationship transformed and seen anew. The
holy relationship is a phenomenal teaching accomplishment. In all its aspects,
as it begins, develops, and becomes accomplished, it represents the reversal of
the unholy relationship. Be comforted in this—the only difficult phase is the
beginning. For here, the goal of the relationship is abruptly shifted to the exact
opposite of what it was. This is the first result of offering the relationship to the
Holy Spirit to use for His purposes.
45
This invitation is accepted immediately, and the Holy Spirit wastes no time
in introducing the practical results of asking Him to enter. At once His goal
replaces yours. This is accomplished very rapidly, but it makes the relationship
seem disturbed, disjunctive, and even quite distressing. The reason is quite clear.
For the relationship as it is is out of line with its own goal, and clearly unsuited
to the purpose which has been accepted for it. In its unholy condition, your goal
was all that seemed to give it meaning. Now it seems to make no sense. Many
relationships have been broken off at this point, and the pursuit of the old goal
reestablished in another relationship. For once the unholy relationship has accepted
the goal of holiness, it can never again be what it was.
46
The temptation of the ego becomes extremely intense with this shift in
goals. For the relationship has not as yet been changed sufficiently to make its
former goal completely without attraction, and its structure is “threatened” by
the recognition of its inappropriateness for meeting its new purpose.The conflict
between the goal and the structure of the relationship is so apparent that they
cannot coexist. Yet now the goal will not be changed. Set firmly in the unholy
relationship, there is no course except to change the relationship to fit the goal.
Until this happy solution is seen and accepted as the only way out of the conflict,
the relationship seems to be severely strained.
47
It would not be kinder to shift the goal more slowly, for the contrast would
be obscured and the ego given time to reinterpret each slow step according to its
liking. Only a radical shift in purpose could induce a complete change of mind
about what the whole relationship is for. As this change develops and is finally
accomplished, it grows increasingly beneficent and joyous. But at the beginning,
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vi. The
the situation is experienced as very precarious. A relationship undertaken by two
individuals for their unholy purposes suddenly has holiness for its goal. As these
two contemplate their relationship from the point of view of this new purpose,
they are inevitably appalled. Their perception of the relationship may even
become quite disorganized. And yet, the former organization of their perception
no longer serves the purpose they have agreed to meet.
48
This is the time for faith. You let this goal be set for you. That was an act of
faith. Do not abandon faith, now that the rewards of faith are being introduced.
If you believed the Holy Spirit was there to accept the relationship, why would
you now not still believe that He is there to purify what He has taken under
His guidance? Have faith in each other in what but seems to be a trying time.
The goal is set. And your relationship has sanity as its purpose. For now you find
yourselves in an insane relationship, recognized as such in the light of its goal.
49
Now the ego counsels thus—substitute for this another relationship to which
your former goal was quite appropriate.You can escape from your distress only by
getting rid of each other.You need not part entirely if you choose not to do so.
But you must exclude major areas of fantasy from each other to save your sanity.
Hear not this now! Have faith in Him Who answered you. He heard. Has He not
been very explicit in His answer? You are not now wholly insane. Can you deny
that He has given you a most explicit statement? Now He asks for faith a little
longer, even in bewilderment. For this will go, and you will see the justification
for your faith emerge to bring you shining conviction. Abandon Him not now,
nor each other. This relationship has been reborn as holy.
50
Accept with gladness what you do not understand, and let it be explained
to you as you perceive its purpose work in it to make it holy.You will find many
opportunities to blame each other for the “failure” of your relationship, for it will
seem at times to have no purpose. A sense of aimlessness will come to haunt you
and to remind you of all the ways you once sought for satisfaction and thought
you found it. Forget not now the misery you really found, and do not now
breathe life into your failing egos. For your relationship has not been disrupted.
It has been saved.
51
You are very new in the ways of salvation and think you have lost your way.
Your way is lost, but think not this is loss. In your newness, remember that you
have started again together. And take each other’s hand to walk together along
a road far more familiar than you now believe. Is it not certain that you will
remember a goal unchanged throughout eternity? For you have chosen but the
goal of God from which your true intent was never absent.
348
Healed Relationship
Throughout the Sonship is the song of freedom heard in joyous echo of
your choice.You have joined with many in the holy instant, and they have joined
with you.Think not your choice will leave you comfortless, for God Himself has
blessed your holy relationship. Join in His blessing, and withhold not yours upon
it. For all it needs now is your blessing that you may see that in it rests salvation.
Condemn salvation not, for it has come to you. And welcome it together, for
it has come to join you together in a relationship in which all the Sonship is
together blessed.
53
You undertook together to invite the Holy Spirit into your relationship. He
could not have entered otherwise. Although you may have made many mistakes
since then, you have also made enormous efforts to help Him do His work. And
He has not been lacking in appreciation for all you have done for Him. Nor does
He see the mistakes at all. Have you been similarly grateful to each other? Have
you consistently appreciated the good efforts and overlooked mistakes? Or has
your appreciation flickered and grown dim in what seemed to be the light of
the mistakes? You are now entering upon a campaign to blame each other for
the discomfort of the situation in which you find yourselves. And by this lack of
thanks and gratitude, you make yourselves unable to express the holy instant, and
thus you lose sight of it.
54
The experience of an instant, however compelling it may be, is easily forgotten
if you allow time to close over it. It must be kept shining and gracious in your
awareness of time but not concealed within it.The instant remains. But where are
you? To give thanks to each other is to appreciate the holy instant and thus enable
its results to be accepted and shared. To attack each other is not to lose the instant
but to make it powerless in its effects.You have received the holy instant, but you
have established a condition in which you cannot use it. As a result, you do not
realize that it is with you still. And by cutting yourself off from its expression,
you have denied yourself its benefit. You reinforce this every time you attack
each other, for the attack must blind you to yourself. And it is impossible to deny
yourself and recognize what has been given and received by you.
55
You stand together in the holy presence of truth itself. Here is the goal,
together with you. Think you not the goal itself will gladly arrange the means for
its accomplishment? It is just this same discrepancy between the purpose that has
been accepted and the means as they stand now which seems to make you suffer,
but which makes Heaven glad. If Heaven were outside you, you could not share
in its gladness.Yet because it is within, the gladness, too, is yours.You are joined in
purpose, but remain still separate and divided on the means.
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Yet the goal is fixed, firm, and unalterable, and the means will surely fall in
place because the goal is sure. And you will share the gladness of the Sonship that
it is so. As you begin to recognize and accept the gifts you have so freely given
to each other, you will also accept the effects of the holy instant and use them
to correct all your mistakes and free you from their results. And learning this,
you will have also learned how to release all the Sonship and offer it in gladness
and thanksgiving to Him Who gave you your release, and Who would extend it
through you.
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vii.
Practical Forgiveness
The practical application of the Holy Spirit’s purpose is extremely simple, but
it is unequivocal. In fact in order to be simple, it must be unequivocal.The simple
is merely what is easily understood, and for this it is apparent that it must be clear.
The setting of the Holy Spirit’s goal is general. Now He will work with you to
make it specific. There are certain very specific guidelines He provides for any
situation, but remember that you do not yet realize their universal application.
Therefore it is essential at this point to use them in each situation separately, until
you can more safely look beyond each situation in an understanding far broader
than you now possess.
58
In any situation in which you are uncertain, the first thing to consider, very
simply, is, “What do I want to come of this? What is it for?” The clarification of
the goal belongs at the beginning, for it is this which will determine the outcome.
In the ego’s procedure, this is reversed. The situation becomes the determiner of
the outcome, which can be anything. The reason for this disorganized approach
is evident.The ego does not know what it wants to come of it. It is aware of what
it does not want, but only that. It has no positive goal at all.
59
Without a clear cut positive goal, set at the outset, the situation just seems
to happen and makes no sense until it has already happened. Then you look back
at it and try to piece together what it must have meant. And you will be wrong.
Not only is your judgment in the past, but you have no idea what should happen.
No goal was set with which to bring the means in line. And now the only
judgment left to make is whether or not the ego likes it—is it acceptable, or does
it call for vengeance? The absence of a criterion for outcome set in advance makes
understanding doubtful and evaluation impossible.
60
The value of deciding in advance what you want to happen is simply that
you will perceive the situation as a means to make it happen. You will therefore
make every effort to overlook what interferes with the accomplishment of your
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vii. Practical
Forgiveness
objective and concentrate on everything which helps you meet it. It is quite
noticeable that this approach has brought you closer to the Holy Spirit’s sorting
out of truth and falsity.The true becomes what can be used to meet the goal.The
false becomes the useless from this point of view.The situation now has meaning,
but only because the goal has made it meaningful.
61
The goal of truth has further practical advantages. If the situation is used for
truth and sanity, its outcome must be peace. And this is quite apart from what the
outcome is. If peace is the condition of truth and sanity and cannot be without
them, where peace is they must be.Truth comes of itself. If you experience peace,
it is because the truth has come to you, and you will see the outcome truly, for
deception cannot prevail against you. And you will recognize the outcome because
you are at peace. Here again, you see the opposite of the ego’s way of looking, for
the ego believes the situation brings the experience. The Holy Spirit knows that
the situation is as the goal determines it and is experienced according to the goal.
62
The goal of truth requires faith. Faith is implicit in the acceptance of the Holy
Spirit’s purpose, and this faith is all-inclusive. Where the goal of truth is set, there
faith must be. The Holy Spirit sees the situation as a whole. The goal establishes
the fact that everyone involved in it will play his part in its accomplishment. This
is inevitable. No one will fail in anything. This seems to ask for faith beyond you
and beyond what you can give.Yet this is so only from the viewpoint of the ego,
for the ego believes in “solving” conflict through fragmentation and does not
perceive the situation as a whole. Therefore, it seeks to split off segments of the
situation and deal with them separately, for it has faith in separation and not in
wholeness.
63
Confronted with any aspect of the situation which seems to be difficult,
the ego will attempt to take this aspect elsewhere and resolve it there. And it
will seem to be successful, except that this attempt conflicts with unity and must
obscure the goal of truth. And peace will not be experienced except in fantasy.
Truth has not come because faith has been denied, being withheld from where it
rightfully belonged.Thus do you lose the understanding of the situation the goal
of truth would bring. For fantasy solutions bring but the illusion of experience,
and the illusion of peace is not the condition in which the truth can enter.
64
The substitutes for aspects of the situation are the witnesses to your lack
of faith. They demonstrate that you did not believe that the situation and the
problem were in the same place. The problem was the lack of faith, and it is this
you demonstrate when you remove it from its source and place it elsewhere. As a
result, you do not see the problem. Had you not lacked the faith it could be solved,
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viii. The
the problem would be gone. And the situation would have been meaningful
to you because the interference in the way of understanding would have been
removed.To remove the problem elsewhere is to keep it. For you remove yourself
from it and make it unsolvable.
viii. The
Need
for
Faith
There is no problem in any situation that faith will not solve.There is no shift
in any aspect of the problem but will make solution impossible. For if you shift
part of the problem elsewhere, the meaning of the problem must be lost, and the
solution to the problem is inherent in its meaning. Is it not possible that all your
problems have been solved, but you have removed yourself from the solution?
Yet faith must be where something has been done and where you see it done. A
situation is a relationship, being the joining of thoughts. If problems are perceived,
it is because the thoughts are judged to be in conflict. But if the goal is truth, this
is impossible. Some idea of bodies must have entered, for minds cannot attack.
66
The thought of bodies is the sign of faithlessness, for bodies cannot solve
anything. And it is their intrusion on the relationship, an error in your thoughts
about the situation, which then becomes the justification for your lack of faith.
You will make this error, but be not at all concerned with that. The error does
not matter. Faithlessness brought to faith will never interfere with truth. But
faithlessness used against truth will always destroy faith. If you lack faith, ask that
it be restored where it was lost and seek not to have it made up to you elsewhere
as if you had been unjustly deprived of it.
67
Only what you have not given can be lacking in any situation. But remember
this: the goal of holiness was set for your relationship and not by you.You did not
set it because holiness cannot be seen except through faith, and your relationship
was not holy because your faith in one another was so limited and little.Your faith
must grow to meet the goal that has been set.The goal’s reality will call this forth,
for you will see that peace and faith will not come separately. What situation can
you be in without faith and remain faithful to each other?
68
Every situation in which you find yourself is but a means to meet the
purpose set for your relationship. See it as something else, and you are faithless.
Use not your faithlessness. Let it enter and look upon it calmly, but do not use
it. Faithlessness is the servant of illusion and wholly faithful to its master. Use it
and it will carry you straight to illusions. Be tempted not by what it offers you. It
interferes not with the goal, but with the value of the goal to you. Accept not the
illusion of peace it offers, but look upon its offering and recognize it is illusion.
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Need for Faith
The goal of illusion is as closely tied to faithlessness as faith to truth. If you
lack faith in anyone to fulfill, and perfectly, his part in any situation dedicated
in advance to truth, your dedication is divided. And so you have been faithless
to each other and used your faithlessness against each other. No relationship is
holy unless its holiness goes with it everywhere. As holiness and faith go hand
in hand, so must its faith go everywhere with it. The goal’s reality will call forth
and accomplish every miracle needed for its fulfillment. Nothing too small or too
enormous, too weak or too compelling, but will be gently turned to its use and
purpose. The universe will serve it gladly, as it serves the universe. But do not
interfere.
70
The power set in you in whom the Holy Spirit’s goal has been established
is so far beyond your little conception of the infinite that you have no idea how
great the strength that goes with you. And you can use this in perfect safety.Yet for
all its might, so great it reaches past the stars and to the universe that lies beyond
them, your little faithlessness can make it useless if you would use the faithlessness
instead.
71
Yet think on this, and learn the cause of faithlessness: You think you hold
against the other what he has done to you. But what you really blame him for
is what you did to him. It is not his past but yours you hold against him. And you
lack faith in him because of what you were.Yet you are as innocent of what you
were as he is. What never was is causeless and is not there to interfere with truth.
There is no cause for faithlessness, but there is a Cause for faith. That Cause has
entered any situation which shares Its purpose. The light of truth shines from the
center of the situation and touches everyone to whom the situation’s purpose
calls. It calls to everyone. There is no situation which does not involve your whole
relationship, in every aspect and complete in every part.You can leave nothing of
yourself outside it and keep the situation holy. For it shares the purpose of your
whole relationship and derives its meaning from it.
72
Enter each situation with the faith that you give to each other, or you are
faithless to your own relationship. Your faith will call the others to share your
purpose, as this same purpose called forth the faith in you. And you will see the
means you once employed to lead you to illusions transformed to means for truth.
When the Holy Spirit changed the purpose of your relationship by exchanging
yours for His, the goal He placed there was extended to every situation in which
you enter or will ever enter. And every situation was thus made free of the past,
which would have made it purposeless.
73
You call for faith because of Him Who walks with you in every situation.You
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ix. The
are no longer wholly insane, nor no longer alone. For loneliness in God must be
a dream. You whose relationship shares the Holy Spirit’s goal are set apart from
loneliness because the truth has come. Its call for faith is strong. Use not your
faithlessness against it, for it calls you to salvation and to peace.
ix. The
Conditions
of
Forgiveness
The holy instant is nothing more than a special case or an extreme example
of what every situation is meant to be. The meaning which the Holy Spirit’s
purpose has given it is also given to every situation. It calls forth just the same
suspension of faithlessness, withheld and left unused, that faith might answer to
the call of truth.The holy instant is the shining example, the clear and unequivocal
demonstration of the meaning of every relationship and every situation, seen as
a whole. Faith has accepted every aspect of the situation, and faithlessness has not
forced any exclusion on it. It is a situation of perfect peace simply because you
have let it be what it is.
75
This simple courtesy is all the Holy Spirit asks of you. Let truth be what it
is. Do not intrude upon it, do not attack it, do not interrupt its coming. Let it
encompass every situation and bring you peace. Not even faith is asked of you,
for truth asks nothing. Let it enter, and it will call forth and secure for you the
faith you need for peace. But rise you not against it, for against your opposition
it cannot come.
76
Would you not want to make a holy instant of every situation? For such is
the gift of faith, freely given wherever faithlessness is laid aside unused. And then
the power of the Holy Spirit’s purpose is free to use instead. This power instantly
transforms all situations into one sure and continuous means for establishing His
purpose and demonstrating its reality. What has been demonstrated has called for
faith and has been given it. Now it becomes a fact from which faith can no longer
be withheld.The strain of refusing faith to truth is enormous and far greater than
you realize. But to answer truth with faith entails no strain at all.
77
To you who have acknowledged the call of your Redeemer, the strain of
not responding to His call seems to be greater than before. This is not so. Before,
the strain was there but you attributed it to something else, believing that the
“something else” produced it. This was never true. For what the “something
else” produced was sorrow and depression, sickness and pain, darkness and dim
imaginings of terror, cold fantasies of fear and fiery dreams of hell. And it was
nothing but the intolerable strain of refusing to give faith to truth and see its
evident reality.
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Conditions of Forgiveness
Such was the crucifixion of the Son of God. His faithlessness did this to
him. Think carefully before you let yourself use faithlessness against him. For
he is risen, and you have accepted the cause of his awakening as yours.You have
assumed your part in his redemption, and you are now fully responsible to him.
Fail him not now, for it has been given you to realize what your lack of faith in
him must mean to you. His salvation is your only purpose. See only this in every
situation, and it will be a means for bringing only this.
79
When you accepted truth as the goal for your relationship, you became
givers of peace as surely as your Father gave peace to you. For the goal of peace
cannot be accepted apart from its conditions, and you had faith in it, for no one
accepts what he does not believe is real. Your purpose has not changed and will
not change, for you accepted what can never change. And nothing that it needs
to be forever changeless can you now withhold from it. Your release is certain.
Give as you have received. And demonstrate that you have risen far beyond any
situation that could hold you back and keep you separate from Him Whose call
you answered.
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ii. Substitution as a
ii.
Substitution
as a
Defense
Defense
You who believe that God is fear made but one substitution. It has taken
many forms because it was the substitution of illusion for truth, of fragmentation
for wholeness. It has become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over
and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one and still is
what it was. That one error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and
life to death, was all you ever made.Your whole world rests upon it. Everything
you see reflects it, and every special relationship which you have ever made is
part of it.
5
You have expressed surprise at hearing how very different is reality from
what you see. You do not realize the magnitude of that one error. It was so
vast and so completely incredible that from it a world of total unreality had to
emerge. What else could come of it? Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough,
as you begin to look at them. But nothing you have seen begins to show you
the enormity of the original error, which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to
shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force
you to further substitutions.
6
That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it and
became the screen on which it was projected and drawn between you and the
truth. For truth extends inward, where the idea of loss is meaningless and only
increase is conceivable. Do you really think it strange that a world in which
everything is backwards and upside-down arose from this? For truth brought to
this could only remain within in quiet, and take no part in all the mad projection
by which this world was made. Call it not sin but madness, for such it was, and
so it still remains. Invest it not with guilt, for guilt implies it was accomplished in
reality. And above all, be not afraid of it.When you seem to see some twisted form
of the original error rise to frighten you, say only, “God is not fear, but love,” and
it will disappear.
7
The truth will save you. It has not left you to go out into the mad world and
so depart from you. Inward is sanity; insanity is outside you. You but believe it is
the other way; that truth is outside and error and guilt within.Your little senseless
substitutions, touched with insanity and swirling lightly off on a mad course like
feathers dancing insanely in the wind, have no substance.They fuse and merge and
separate in shifting and totally meaningless patterns which need not be judged
at all. To judge them individually is pointless. Their tiny differences in form are
no real differences at all. None of them matters. That they have in common and
nothing else.Yet what else is necessary to make them all the same?
4
eighteen
The Dream and the Reality
i.
T
Introduction
o substitute is to accept instead. If you would but consider exactly what this
entails, you would perceive at once how much at variance this is with the
goal the Holy Spirit has given you and would accomplish for you. To substitute is
to choose between, renouncing one in favor of the other. For this special purpose,
one is judged more valuable and the other is replaced by him. The relationship
in which the substitution occurred is thus fragmented and its purpose split
accordingly. To fragment is to exclude, and substitution is the strongest defense
the ego has for separation.
18:2
The Holy Spirit never uses substitutes. Where the ego perceives one person
as a replacement for another, the Holy Spirit sees them joined and indivisible.
He does not judge between them, knowing they are one. Being united, they are
one because they are the same. Substitution is clearly a process in which they
are perceived as different. One would unite; the other separate. Nothing can
come between what God has joined and what the Holy Spirit sees as one. But
everything seems to come between the fragmented relationships the ego sponsors
to destroy.
3
The one emotion in which substitution is impossible is love. Fear involves
substitution by definition, for it is love’s replacement. Fear is both a fragmented
and a fragmenting emotion. It seems to take many forms, and each seems to
require a different form of acting out for satisfaction. While this appears to
introduce quite variable behavior, a far more serious effect lies in the fragmented
perception from which the behavior stems. No one is seen complete. The body
is emphasized, with special emphasis on certain parts, and used as the standard
for comparison for either acceptance or rejection of suitability for acting out a
special form of fear.
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iii. The
Chapter 18: THE DREAM AND THE REALITY
Let them all go, dancing in the wind, dipping and turning till they disappear
from sight, far, far outside you. And turn you to the stately calm within, where
in holy stillness dwells the living God you never left and Who never left you.
The Holy Spirit takes you gently by the hand and retraces with you your mad
journey outside yourself, leading you gently back to the truth and safety within.
He brings all your insane projections and your wild substitutions which you
have placed outside you to the truth.Thus He reverses the course of insanity and
restores you to reason.
9
In your relationship, where He has taken charge of everything at your request,
He has set the course inward to the truth you share. In the mad world outside
you, nothing can be shared but only substituted, and sharing and substituting
have nothing in common in reality.Within yourselves you love each other with a
perfect love. Here is holy ground in which no substitution can enter and where
only the truth about each other can abide. Here you are joined in God, as much
together as you are with Him. The original error has not entered here, nor ever
will. Here is the radiant truth to which the Holy Spirit has committed your
relationship. Let Him bring it here, where you would have it be. Give Him but a
little faith in each other, to help him show you that no substitute you made for
Heaven can keep you from it. In you there is no separation, and no substitute can
keep you from each other.Your reality was God’s creation and has no substitute.
10
You are so firmly joined in truth that only God is there. And He would never
accept something else instead of you. He loves you both, equally and as one. And
as He loves you, so you are. You are not joined together in illusions but in the
Thought so holy and so perfect that illusions cannot remain to darken the holy
place in which you stand together. God is with you, my brothers. Let us join in
Him in peace and gratitude and accept His gift as our most holy and perfect
reality, which we share in Him.
11
Heaven is restored to all the Sonship through your relationship, for in it lies
the Sonship, whole and beautiful, safe in your love. Heaven has entered quietly, for
all illusions have been gently brought unto the truth in you and love has shined
upon you, blessing your relationship with truth. God and His whole creation
have entered it together. How lovely and how holy is your relationship, with the
truth shining upon it! Heaven beholds it and rejoices that you have let it come to
you. The universe within you stands with you, together. And Heaven looks with
love on what is joined in it, along with its Creator.
12
Whom God has called should hear no substitutes.Their call is but an echo of
the original error which shattered Heaven. And what became of peace in those
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Basis of the Dream
who heard? Return with me to Heaven, walking together out of this world and
through another to the loveliness and joy the other holds within it. Would you
still further weaken and break apart what is already broken and hopeless? Is it
here that you would look for happiness? Or would you not prefer to heal what
has been broken and join in making whole what has been ravaged by separation
and disease?
13
You have been called together to the most holy function that this world
contains. It is the only one which has no limits and reaches out to every broken
fragment of the Sonship with healing and uniting comfort. This is offered you in
your holy relationship. Accept it here, and you will give as you have accepted.The
peace of God is given you with the glowing purpose in which you join.The holy
light that brought you together must extend, as you accepted it.
iii. The
Basis
of the
Dream
Does not a world that seems quite real arise in dreams? Yet think what this
world is. It is clearly not the world you saw before you slept. Rather, it is a
distortion of the world, planned solely around what you would have preferred.
Here, you are “free” to make over whatever seemed to attack you and change it
into a tribute to your ego, which was outraged by the “attack.”This would not be
your wish unless you saw yourself as one with the ego, which always looks upon
itself and therefore on you as under attack and highly vulnerable to it.
15
Dreams are chaotic because they are governed by your conflicting wishes, and
therefore they have no concern with what is true. They are the best example you
could have of how perception can be utilized to substitute illusions for truth.
You do not take them seriously on awaking because the fact that reality is so
outrageously violated in them becomes apparent.Yet they are a way of looking at
the world and changing it to suit the ego better. They provide striking examples
both of the ego’s inability to tolerate reality and your willingness to change reality
on its behalf.
16
You do not find the differences between what you see in sleep and on
awaking disturbing.You recognize that what you see on waking is blotted out in
dreams.Yet on awakening, you do not expect it to be gone. In dreams you arrange
everything. People become what you would have them be, and what they do
you order. No limit on substitution is laid upon you. For a time, it seems as if the
world were given you, to make it what you will.You do not realize that you are
attacking it, trying to triumph over it and make it serve you.
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359
iv. Light in the
Dreams are perceptual temper tantrums in which you literally scream, “I
want it thus!” And thus it seems to be. And yet the dream cannot escape its
origin. Anger and fear pervade it, and in an instant, the illusion of satisfaction
is invaded by the illusion of terror. For the dream of your ability to control
reality by substituting a world which you prefer is terrifying. Your attempts to
blot out reality are very fearful, but this you are not willing to accept. And so you
substitute the fantasy that reality is fearful, not what you would do to it. And thus
is guilt made real.
18
Dreams show you that you have the power to make a world as you would
have it be, and that because you want it, you see it. And while you see it, you do
not doubt that it is real.Yet here is a world, clearly within your mind, that seems
to be outside.You do not respond to it as though you made it, nor do you realize
that the emotions which the dream produces must come from you. It is the
figures in the dream and what they do that seem to make the dream.You do not
realize that you are making them act out for you, for if you did, the guilt would
not be theirs, and the illusion of satisfaction would be gone. In dreams these
features are not obscure.You seem to waken, and the dream is gone.Yet what you
fail to recognize is that what caused the dream has not gone with it.
19
Your wish to make another world that is not real remains with you. And what
you seem to wake to is but another form of this same world you see in dreams.
All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have
different forms, and that is all. Their content is the same. They are your protest
against reality and your fixed and insane idea that you can change it. In your
waking dreams, the special relationship is your determination to keep your hold
on unreality and to prevent yourself from waking. And while you see more value
in sleeping than in waking, you will not let go of it.
20
The Holy Spirit, ever practical in His wisdom, accepts your dreams and uses
them as means for waking. You would have used them to remain asleep. We once
said that the first change, before dreams disappear, is that your dreams of fear
are changed to happy dreams. That is what the Holy Spirit does in your special
relationship. He does not destroy it nor snatch it away from you. Your special
relationship will remain, not as a source of pain and guilt, but as a source of joy and
freedom. It will not be for you alone, for therein lay its misery. As its unholiness
kept it a thing apart, its holiness will become an offering to everyone.
21
Your special relationship will be a means for undoing guilt in everyone blessed
through your holy relationship. It will be a happy dream, and one which you will
share with all who come within your sight. Through it, the blessing which the
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Dream
Holy Spirit has laid upon it will be extended. Think not that He has forgotten
anyone in the purpose He has given you. And think not that He has forgotten
you to whom He gave the gift. He uses everyone who calls on Him as means for
the salvation of everyone. And He will waken everyone through you who offered
your relationship to Him. If you but recognized His gratitude! Or mine through
His! For we are joined as in one purpose, being of One Mind with Him.
22
Let not the dream take hold to close your eyes. It is not strange that dreams
can make a world that is unreal.The wish to make it is incredible.Your relationship
has become one in which the wish has been removed because its purpose has
been changed from one of dreams to one of truth. You are not sure of this
because you think it may be this that is the dream. You are so used to choosing
between dreams you do not see that you have made, at last, the choice between
the truth and all illusions.
23
Yet Heaven is sure. This is no dream. Its coming means that you have chosen
truth, and it has come because you have been willing to let your special relationship
meet its conditions. In your relationship, the Holy Spirit has gently laid the real
world—the world of happy dreams from which awaking is so easy and so natural.
For as your sleeping and your waking dreams represent the same wishes in your
mind, so do the real world and the truth of Heaven join in the Will of God. The
dream of waking is easily transferred to its reality. For this dream comes from your
will joined with the Will of God. And what this Will would have accomplished
has never not been done.
iv.
Light
in the
Dream
You who have spent your lives in bringing truth to illusion, reality to fantasy,
have walked the way of dreams. For you have gone from waking to sleeping
and on and on to a yet deeper sleep. Each dream has led to other dreams, and
every fantasy which seemed to bring a light into the darkness but made the
darkness deeper.Your goal was darkness in which no ray of light could enter. And
you sought a blackness so complete that you could hide from truth forever in
complete insanity. What you forgot was simply that God cannot destroy Himself.
The light is in you. Darkness can cover it but cannot put it out.
25
As the light comes nearer, you will rush to darkness, shrinking from the truth,
sometimes retreating to the lesser forms of fear and sometimes to stark terror.
But you will advance because your goal is the advance from fear to truth. You
know this. The goal which you accepted is the goal of knowledge, for which you
signified your willingness. Fear seems to live in darkness, and when you are afraid,
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v. The
you have stepped back. Let us then join quickly in an instant of light, and it will
be enough to remind you that your goal is light. Truth has rushed to meet you
since you called upon it.
26
If you knew Who walks beside you on this way which you have chosen,
fear would be impossible. You do not know because the journey into darkness
has been long and cruel, and you have gone deep into it. A little flicker of your
eyelids, closed so long, has not yet been sufficient to give you confidence in
yourselves, so long despised.You go toward love, still hating it and terribly afraid
of its judgment upon you. And you do not realize that you are not afraid of love,
but only of what you have made of it. You are advancing to love’s meaning and
away from all illusions in which you have surrounded it. When you retreat to the
illusion, your fear increases, for there is little doubt that what you think it means is
fearful.Yet what is that to us who travel surely and very swiftly away from fear?
27
You who hold each other’s hand also hold mine, for when you joined each
other you were not alone. Do you believe that I would leave you in the darkness
you agreed to leave with me? In your relationship is this world’s light. And fear
must disappear before you now. Be tempted not to snatch away the gift of faith
you offered to each other. You will succeed only in frightening yourselves. The
gift is given forever, for God Himself received it.You cannot take it back.You have
accepted God. The holiness of your relationship is established in Heaven.You do
not understand what you accepted, but remember that your understanding is not
necessary. All that was necessary was merely the wish to understand. That wish
was the desire to be holy.The will of God is granted you. For you desire the only
thing you ever had or ever were.
28
Each instant that we spend together will teach you that this goal is possible and
will strengthen your desire to reach it. And in your desire lies its accomplishment.
Your desire is now in complete accord with all the power of the Holy Spirit’s
Will. No little, faltering footsteps that you may take can separate your desire from
His Will and from His strength. I hold your hand as surely as you agreed to take
each other’s.You will not separate, for I stand with you and walk with you in your
advance to truth. And where we go, we carry God with us.
29
In your relationship, you have joined with me in bringing Heaven to the
Son of God, who hid in darkness.You have been willing to bring the darkness to
light, and this willingness has given strength to everyone who would remain in
darkness. Those who would see will see. And they will join with me in carrying
their light into the darkness when the darkness in them is offered to the light and
is removed forever. My need for you, joined with me in the holy light of your
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Little Willingness
relationship, is your need for salvation. Would I not give you what you gave to
me? For when you joined each other, you answered me.
30
You who are now the bringers of salvation have the function of bringing
light to darkness. The darkness in you has been brought to light. Carry it back
to darkness from the holy instant to which you brought it. We are made whole
in our desire to make whole. Let not time worry you, for all the fear that you
experience is really past. Time has been readjusted to help us do together what
your separate pasts would hinder.You have gone past fear, for no two minds can
join in the desire for love without love’s joining them.
31
Not one light in Heaven but goes with you. Not one ray that shines forever
in the Mind of God but shines on you. Heaven is joined with you in your
advance to Heaven. When such great light has joined with you to give the little
spark of your desire the power of God Himself, can you remain in darkness?
You are coming home together after a long and meaningless journey which you
undertook apart and which led nowhere. You have found each other and will
light each other’s way. And from this light will the Great Rays extend back into
darkness and forward unto God to shine away the past and so make room for His
eternal Presence, in which everything is radiant in the light.
v. The
Little Willingness
The holy instant is the result of your determination to be holy. It is the answer.
The desire and the willingness to let it come precedes its coming. You prepare
your minds for it only to the extent of recognizing that you want it above all else.
It is not necessary that you do more; indeed, it is necessary that you realize that
you cannot do more. Do not attempt to give the Holy Spirit what He does not
ask, or you will add the ego unto Him and confuse the two. He asks but little. It
is He who adds the greatness and the might. He joins with you to make the holy
instant far greater than you can understand. It is your realization that you need
do so little that enables Him to give so much.
33
Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough. But trust implicitly
your willingness, whatever else may enter. Concentrate only on this and be not
disturbed that shadows surround it. That is why you came. If you could come
without them, you would not need the holy instant. Come to it not in arrogance,
assuming that you must achieve the state its coming brings with it. The miracle
of the holy instant lies in your willingness to let it be what it is. And in your
willingness for this lies also your acceptance of yourself as you were meant to be.
32
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vi. The
Humility will never ask that you remain content with littleness. But it does
require that you be not content with less than greatness, which comes not of you.
Your difficulty with the holy instant arises from your fixed conviction that you
are not worthy of it. And what is this but the determination to be as you would
make yourself? God did not create His dwelling-place unworthy of Him. And if
you believe He cannot enter where He wills to be, you must be interfering with
His Will.You do not need the strength of willingness to come from you, but only
from His Will.
35
The holy instant does not come from your little willingness alone. It is always
the result of your small willingness combined with the unlimited power of God’s
Will. You have been wrong in thinking that it is needful to prepare yourself for
Him. It is impossible to make arrogant preparations for holiness and not believe
that it is up to you to establish the conditions for peace. God has established them.
They do not wait upon your willingness for what they are. Your willingness is
needed only to make it possible to teach you what they are. If you maintain you
are unworthy of learning this, you are interfering with the lesson by believing
that you make the learner different. You did not make the learner, nor can you
make him different.Would you first make a miracle yourself and then expect one
to be made for you?
36
You merely ask the question. The answer is given. Seek not to answer it, but
merely receive the answer as it is given. In preparing for the holy instant, do not
attempt to make yourself holy to be ready to receive it. That is but to confuse
your role with God’s. Atonement cannot come to those who think that they must
first atone, but only to those who offer it nothing more than simple willingness
to make way for it. Purification is of God alone and therefore for you. Rather
than seek to prepare yourself for Him, try to think thus:
34
37
I who am host to God am worthy of Him.
He Who established His dwelling-place in me created it
as He would have it be.
It is not needful that I make it ready for Him,
But only that I do not interfere with His plan to restore to
me my own awareness of my readiness, which is eternal.
I need add nothing to His plan.
But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute my own in place of it.
And that is all. Add more and you will merely take away the little that is
asked. Remember you made guilt and that your plan for the escape from guilt
38
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Happy Dream
has been to bring Atonement to it and make salvation fearful. And it is only fear
that you will add if you prepare yourself for love. The preparation for the holy
instant belongs to Him Who gives it. Release yourselves to Him Whose function
is release. Do not assume His function for Him. Give Him but what He asks, that
you may learn how little is your part and how great is His.
39
It is this that makes the holy instant so easy and so natural. You make it
difficult because you insist there must be more that you need do. And it is very
hard for you to realize that it is not personally insulting that your contribution
and the Holy Spirit’s are so extremely disproportionate. You are still convinced
your understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth and makes it what it
is. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing. Salvation is easy
just because it asks nothing that you cannot give right now.
40
Forget not that it has been your decision to make everything that is natural
and easy for you impossible. What you believe to be impossible will be if God so
wills it, but you will remain quite unaware of it. If you believe the holy instant is
difficult for you, it is because you have become the arbiter of what is possible and
remain unwilling to give place to One Who knows.The whole belief in orders of
difficulty in miracles is centered on this. Everything God wills is not only possible
but has already happened. And that is why the past has gone. It never happened in
reality. Only in your minds, which thought it did, is its undoing needful.
vi. The
Happy Dream
Prepare you now for the undoing of what never was. If you already understood
the difference between truth and illusion, the Atonement would have no meaning.
The holy instant, your holy relationship, the Holy Spirit’s teaching, and all the
means by which salvation is accomplished would have no purpose. For they are
all but aspects of the plan to change your dreams of fear to happy dreams from
which you waken easily to knowledge. Put yourself not in charge of this, for you
cannot distinguish between advance and retreat. Some of your greatest advances
you have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats you have evaluated
as success.
42
Never approach the holy instant after you have tried to remove all fear and
hatred from your mind.That is its function. Never attempt to overlook your guilt
before you ask the Holy Spirit’s help.That is His function.Your part is only to offer
Him a little willingness to let Him remove all fear and hatred and to be forgiven.
On your little faith, joined with His understanding, He will build your part in
the Atonement and make sure that you fulfill it easily. And with Him you will
41
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vii. Dreams and the
build a ladder planted in the solid rock of faith and rising even to Heaven. Nor
will you use it to ascend to Heaven alone.
43
Through your holy relationship, reborn and blessed in every holy instant
which you do not arrange, thousands will rise to Heaven with you. Can you plan
for this? Or could you prepare yourselves for such a function? Yet it is possible
because God wills it. Nor will He change His Mind about it. The means and
purpose both belong to Him.You have accepted one; the other will be provided.
A purpose such as this without the means is inconceivable. He will provide the
means to anyone who shares His purpose.
44
Happy dreams come true, not because they are dreams, but only because they
are happy. And so they must be loving. Their message is, “Thy Will be done,” and
not,“I want it otherwise.”The alignment of means and purpose is an undertaking
impossible for you to understand.You do not even realize you have accepted the
Holy Spirit’s purpose as your own, and you would merely bring unholy means
to its accomplishment. The little faith it needed to change the purpose is all that
is required to receive the means and use them.
45
It is no dream to love your brother as yourself. Nor is your holy relationship
a dream. All that remains of dreams within it is that it is still a special relationship.
Yet it is very useful to the Holy Spirit, Who has a special function here. It will
become the happy dream through which He can spread joy to thousands on
thousands who believe that love is fear, not happiness. Let Him fulfill the function
that He gave to your relationship by accepting it for you, and nothing will be
wanting that would make of it what He would have it be.
46
When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by anything,
stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness in spite of fear to let
Him exchange this instant for the holy one which you would rather have. He
will never fail in this. But forget not that your relationship is one, and so it must
be that whatever threatens the peace of one is an equal threat to the other. The
power of joining and its blessing lie in the fact that it is now impossible for either
of you to experience fear alone or to attempt to deal with it alone. Never believe
that this is necessary or even possible.Yet just as this is impossible, so is it equally
impossible that the holy instant come to either of you without the other. And it
will come to both at the request of either.
47
Whichever is saner at the time when the threat is perceived should remember
how deep is his indebtedness to the other and how much gratitude is due him
and be glad that he can pay his debt by bringing happiness to both. Let him
remember this, and say:
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48
Body
I desire this holy instant for myself
That I may share it with my brother, whom I love.
It is not possible that I can have it without him, or he without me.
Yet it is wholly possible for us to share it now.
And so I choose this instant as the one to offer to the Holy Spirit,
That His blessing may descend on us and keep us both in peace.
vii.
Dreams
and the
Body
There is nothing outside you. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is
in the realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you. For God created
only this, and He did not depart from it nor leave it separate from Himself. The
Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling-place of the Son of God, who left not his
Father and dwells not apart from Him. Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is
merely an awareness of perfect Oneness and the knowledge that there is nothing
else; nothing outside this Oneness and nothing else within.
50
What could God give but knowledge of Himself? What else is there to give?
The belief that you could give and get something else, something outside yourself,
has cost you the awareness of Heaven and the loss of your Identity. And you have
done a stranger thing than you yet realize.You have displaced your guilt to your
bodies from your minds.Yet a body cannot be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself.
You who think you hate your bodies deceive yourselves.You hate your minds, for
guilt has entered into them, and they would remain separate, which they cannot
do.
51
Minds are joined; bodies are not. Only by assigning to the mind the properties
of the body does separation seem to be possible. And it is mind that seems to be
fragmented and private and alone. Its guilt, which keeps it separate, is projected
to the body, which suffers and dies because it is attacked, to hold the separation
in the mind and let it not know its identity. Mind cannot attack, but it can make
fantasies and direct the body to act them out.Yet it is never what the body does
that seems to satisfy. Unless the mind believes the body is actually acting out its
fantasies, it will attack the body by increasing the projection of its guilt upon it.
52
In this, the mind is clearly delusional. It cannot attack, but it maintains it can
and uses what it does to hurt the body to prove it can. The mind cannot attack,
but it can deceive itself. And this is all it does when it believes it has attacked the
body. It can project its guilt, but it will not lose it through projection. And though
it clearly can misperceive the function of the body, it cannot change its function
49
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from what the Holy Spirit establishes it to be. The body was not made by love.
Yet love does not condemn it and can use it lovingly, respecting what the Son of
God has made and using it to save him from illusions.
53
Would you not have the instruments of separation reinterpreted as means for
salvation and used for purposes of love? Would you not welcome and support
the shift from fantasies of vengeance to release from them? Your perception of
the body can clearly be sick, but project not this upon the body. For your wish
to make destructive what cannot destroy can have no real effect at all. And what
God created is only what He would have it be, being His Will.You cannot make
His Will destructive.You can make fantasies in which your will conflicts with His,
but that is all.
54
It is insane to use the body as the scapegoat for guilt, directing its attack and
blaming it for what you wished it to do. It is impossible to act out fantasies. For
it is still the fantasies you want, and they have nothing to do with what the body
does. It does not dream of them, and they but make it a liability where it could
be an asset. For fantasies have made your body your “enemy,” weak, vulnerable,
and treacherous, worthy of the hate which you invest in it. How has this served
you? You have identified with this thing you hate, the instrument of vengeance
and the perceived source of your guilt.You have done this to a thing that has no
meaning, proclaiming it to be the dwelling-place of the Son of God and turning
it against him.
55
This is the host of God that you have made. And neither God nor His most
holy Son can enter an abode which harbors hate and where you have sown
the seeds of vengeance, violence, and death. This thing you made to serve your
guilt stands between you and other minds. The minds are joined, but you do not
identify with them. You see yourself locked in a separate prison, removed and
unreachable, incapable of reaching out as being reached.You hate this prison you
have made and would destroy it. But you would not escape from it, leaving it
unharmed, without your guilt upon it.
56
Yet only thus can you escape. The home of vengeance is not yours; the place
you set aside to house your hate is not a prison but an illusion of yourself. The
body is a limit imposed on the universal communication which is an eternal
property of mind. But the communication is internal. Mind reaches to itself. It
does not go out. Within itself it has no limits, and there is nothing outside it. It
encompasses you entirely; you within it, and it within you. There is nothing else,
anywhere or ever.
57
The body is outside you, and but seems to surround you, shutting you off
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vii. Dreams and the
Body
from others and keeping you apart from them. It is not there. There is no barrier
between God and His Son, nor can His Son be separated from himself except in
illusions. This is not his reality, though he believes it is. Yet this could only be if
God were wrong. God would have had to create differently and to have separated
Himself from His Son to make this possible. He would have had to create different
things and to establish different orders of reality, only some of which were love.Yet
love must be forever like itself, changeless forever and forever without alternative.
And so it is.You cannot put a barrier around yourself because God placed none
between Himself and you.
58
You can stretch out your hand and reach to Heaven. You whose hands are
joined have begun to reach beyond the body, but not outside yourselves, to
reach your shared Identity together. Could this be outside you? Where God is
not? Is He a body, and did He create you as He is not and where He cannot be?
You are surrounded only by Him. What limit can there be on you whom He
encompasses? Everyone has experienced what he would call a sense of being
transported beyond himself. This feeling of liberation far exceeds the dream of
freedom sometimes experienced in special relationships. It is a sense of actual
escape from limitations.
59
If you will consider what this “transportation” really entails, you will realize
that it is a sudden unawareness of the body and a joining of yourself and something
else in which your mind enlarges to encompass it. It becomes part of you as you
unite with it. And both become whole as neither is perceived as separate. What
really happens is that you have given up the illusion of a limited awareness and
lost your fear of union.The love that instantly replaces it extends to what has freed
you and unites with it. And while this lasts, you are not uncertain of your Identity
and would not limit it.You have escaped from fear to peace, asking no questions
of reality but merely accepting it.You have accepted this instead of the body and
have let yourself be one with something beyond it simply by not letting your
mind be limited by it.
60
This can occur regardless of the physical distance which seems to be between
you and what you join, of your respective positions in space, and of your differences
in size and seeming quality. Time is not relevant; it can occur with something
past, present, or anticipated. The “something” can be anything and anywhere—a
sound, a sight, a thought, a memory, and even a general idea without specific
reference.Yet in every case, you joined it without reservation because you love it
and would be with it. And so you rush to meet it, letting your limits melt away,
suspending all the “laws” your body obeys and gently setting them aside.
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There is no violence at all in this escape.The body is not attacked, but simply
properly perceived. It does not limit you merely because you would not have it
so. You are not really “lifted out” of it; it cannot contain you. You go where you
would be, gaining, not losing, a sense of self. In these instants of release from
physical restrictions, you experience much of what happens in the holy instant;
the lifting of the barriers of time and space, the sudden experience of peace
and joy, and, above all, the lack of awareness of the body and of the questioning
whether or not all this is possible.
62
It is possible because you want it. The sudden expansion of the self which
takes place with your desire for it is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds.
It calls to you to be yourself within its safe embrace. There are the laws of limit
lifted for you, to welcome you to openness of mind and freedom. Come to this
place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace. Not through destruction,
not through a “breaking out,” but merely by a quiet “melting in.” For peace will
join you there simply because you have been willing to let go the limits you have
placed upon love and joined it where it is and where it led you in answer to its
gentle call to be at peace.
61
viii.
I Need Do Nothing
You still have too much faith in the body as a source of strength. What plans
do you make that do not involve its comfort or protection or enjoyment in
some way? This makes it an end and not a means in your interpretation, and this
always means you still find sin attractive. No one accepts Atonement for himself
who still accepts sin as his goal. You have thus not met your one responsibility.
Atonement is not welcomed by those who prefer pain and destruction.
64
You have made much progress and are really trying to make still more, but
there is one thing you have never done—not for one instant have you utterly
forgotten the body. It has faded at times from your sight, but it has not yet
completely disappeared. You are not asked to let this happen for more than an
instant, yet it is in this instant that the miracle of Atonement happens. Afterwards,
you will see the body again, but never quite the same. And every instant that you
spend without awareness of it gives you a different view of it when you return.
65
At no single instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or
anticipated, but never experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem
real. Time controls it entirely, for sin is never present. In any single instant, the
attraction of guilt would be experienced as pain and nothing else and would be
avoided. It has no attraction now. Its whole attraction is imaginary and therefore
63
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viii. I
Need Do Nothing
must be thought of in the past or in the future.
66
It is impossible to accept the holy instant without reservation unless just for
an instant you are willing to see no past or future.You cannot prepare for it without
placing it in the future. Release is given you the instant you desire it. Many have
spent a lifetime in preparation and have indeed achieved their instants of success.
This course does not attempt to teach more than they learned in time, but it does
aim at saving time.You are attempting to follow a very long road to the goal you
have accepted. It is extremely difficult to reach Atonement by fighting against
sin. Nor is a lifetime of contemplation and long periods of meditation aimed at
detachment from the body necessary. All such attempts will ultimately succeed
because of their purpose.Yet the means are tedious and very time consuming, for
all of them look to the future for release from a state of present unworthiness and
inadequacy.
67
Your way will be different, not in purpose but in means. A holy relationship
is a means of saving time. One instant spent together restores the universe to both
of you. You are prepared. Now you need but to remember you need do nothing.
It would be far more profitable now merely to concentrate on this than to
consider what you should do.When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with
temptation and fight against the giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into
the mind given to contemplation; or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone,
it always comes with just one happy realization: “I need do nothing.”
68
Here is the ultimate release which everyone will one day find in his own way,
at his own time. We do not need this time. Time has been saved for you because
you are together. This is the special means this course is using to save you time.
You are not making use of the course if you insist on using means which have
served others well, neglecting what was made for you. Save time for me by only
this one preparation and practice, doing nothing else. “I need do nothing” is a
statement of allegiance, a truly undivided loyalty. Believe it for just one instant,
and you will accomplish more than is given to a century of contemplation or of
struggle against temptation.
69
To do anything involves the body. And if you recognize you need do nothing,
you have withdrawn the body’s value from your mind. Here is the quick and open
door through which you slip past centuries of effort and escape from time. This
is the way in which sin loses all attraction right now. For here is time denied and
past and future gone. Who need do nothing has no need for time. To do nothing
is to rest and make a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to
demand attention. Into this place the Holy Spirit comes and there abides. He
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ix. The
will remain when you forget and the body’s activities return to occupy your
conscious mind.
70
Yet there will always be this place of rest to which you can return. And you
will be more aware of this quiet center of the storm than all its raging activity.
This quiet center, in which you do nothing, will remain with you, giving you
rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent. For from this center
will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly. It is this center, from which
the body is absent, that will keep it so in your awareness of it.
ix. The
Purpose
of the
Body
It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body
is a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was made to limit
the unlimited.Think not that this is merely allegorical, for it was made to limit you.
Can you who see yourselves within a body know yourself as an idea? Everything
you recognize you identify with externals, something outside itself. You cannot
even think of God without a body or some form you think you recognize.
72
The body cannot know. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses,
you will not see the grandeur which surrounds you. God cannot come into a
body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love will always seem to shut Him
out and to keep you apart from Him.The body is a tiny fence around a little part
of a glorious and complete idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very
little segment of Heaven splintered from the whole, proclaiming that within it is
your kingdom, where God can enter not.
73
Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And to defend this little speck
of dust, it bids you fight against the universe. This fragment of your mind is such
a tiny part of it that, could you but appreciate the whole, you would see instantly
that it is like the smallest sunbeam to the sun or like the faintest ripple on the
surface of the ocean. In its amazing arrogance, this tiny sunbeam has decided it
is the sun; this almost imperceptible ripple hails itself as the ocean. Think how
alone and frightened is this little thought, this infinitesimal illusion, holding itself
apart against the universe.The sun becomes the sunbeam’s “enemy” which would
devour it, and the ocean terrifies the little ripple and wants to swallow it.
74
Yet neither sun nor ocean is even aware of all this strange and meaningless
activity. They merely continue, unaware that they are feared and hated by a tiny
segment of themselves. Even that segment is not lost to them, for it could not survive
apart from them. And what it thinks it is in no way changes its total dependence on
71
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Purpose of the Body
them for its being. Its whole existence still remains in them. Without the sun the
sunbeam would be gone; the ripple without the ocean is inconceivable.
75
Such is the strange position in which those in a world inhabited by bodies
seem to be. Each body seems to house a separate mind, a disconnected thought
living alone and in no way joined to the Thought by which it was created. Each
tiny fragment seems to be self-contained needing each other for some things but
by no means totally dependent on their one Creator for everything and needing
the whole to give them any meaning, for by themselves they do mean nothing.
Nor have they any life apart and by themselves.
76
Like to the sun and ocean your Self continues, unmindful that this tiny part
regards itself as you. It is not missing; it could not exist if it were separate, nor
would the whole be whole without it. It is not a separate kingdom, ruled by an
idea of separation from the rest. Nor does a fence surround it, preventing it from
joining with the rest and keeping it apart from its Creator. This little aspect is no
different from the whole, being continuous with it and at one with it. It leads no
separate life because its life is the oneness in which its being was created.
77
Do not accept this little fenced-off aspect as yourself. The sun and ocean are
as nothing beside what you are.The sunbeam sparkles only in the sunlight, and the
ripple dances as it rests upon the ocean.Yet in neither sun nor ocean is the power
that rests in you.Would you remain within your tiny kingdom, a sorry king, a bitter
ruler of all he surveys who looks on nothing, yet who would still die to defend it?
This little self is not your kingdom. Arched high above it and surrounding it with
love is the glorious whole, which offers all its happiness and deep content to every
part. The little aspect which you think you set apart is no exception.
78
Love knows no bodies and reaches to everything created like itself. Its total
lack of limit is its meaning. It is completely impartial in its giving, encompassing
only to preserve and keep complete what it would give. In your tiny kingdom,
you have so little! Should it not, then, be there that you would call on love to
enter? Look at the desert, dry and unproductive, scorched and joyless, which
makes up your little kingdom. And realize the life and joy which love would
bring to it from where it comes and where it would return with you.
79
The Thought of God surrounds your little kingdom, waiting at the barrier
you built to come inside and shine upon the barren ground. See how life springs
up everywhere! The desert becomes a garden, green and deep and quiet, offering
rest to those who lost their way and wander in the dust. Give them a place of
refuge, prepared by love for them where once a desert was. And everyone you
welcome will bring love with him from Heaven for you. They enter one by one
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into this holy place, but they will not depart as they had come, alone. The love
they brought with them will stay with them, as it will stay with you. And under its
beneficence, your little garden will expand and reach out to everyone who thirsts
for living water but has grown too weary to go on alone.
80
Go out and find them, for they bring your Self with them. And lead them
gently to your quiet garden and receive their blessing there. So will it grow and
stretch across the desert, leaving no lonely little kingdoms locked away from love
and leaving you inside. And you will recognize yourself and see your little garden
gently transformed into the Kingdom of Heaven with all the love of its Creator
shining upon it.The holy instant is your invitation to love, to enter into your bleak
and joyless kingdom, and to transform it into a garden of peace and welcome.
81
Love’s answer is inevitable. It will come because you came without the body
and interposed no barriers which would interfere with its glad coming. In the
holy instant, you ask of love only what it offers everyone, neither less nor more.
Asking for everything, you will receive it. And your shining Self will lift the tiny
aspect which you tried to hide from Heaven straight into Heaven. No part of love
calls on the whole in vain. No Son of God remains outside His Fatherhood.
82
Be sure of this—love has entered your special relationship and entered fully
at your weak request.You do not recognize that love has come because you have
not yet let go of all the barriers you hold against each other. And you will not be
able to give love welcome separately.You could no more know God alone than
He knows you without your brother. But together you could no more be unaware
of love than love could know you not or fail to recognize itself in you.
83
You have reached the end of an ancient journey, not realizing yet that it is
over. You are still worn and tired and the desert’s dust still seems to cloud your
eyes and keep you sightless.Yet He Whom you welcomed has come to you and
would welcome you. He has waited long to give you this. Receive it now of Him,
for He would have you know Him. Only a little wall of dust still stands between
you. Blow on it lightly and with happy laughter and it will fall away and walk
into the garden love has prepared for both of you.
x. The
Delusional Thought System
You have been told to bring the darkness to the light and guilt to holiness.
And you have also been told that error must be corrected at its source.Therefore,
it is the tiny part of yourself, the little thought that seems split off and separate,
which the Holy Spirit needs. The rest is fully in God’s keeping and needs no
84
374
x. The
Delusional Thought System
guide.Yet this wild and delusional thought needs help because in its delusions it
thinks it is the Son of God, whole and omnipotent, sole ruler of the kingdom it
set apart to tyrannize by madness into obedience and slavery.
85
This is the little part of you you think you stole from Heaven. Give it back
to Heaven. Heaven has not lost it, but you have lost sight of Heaven. Let the Holy
Spirit remove it from the withered kingdom in which you set it off, surrounded
by darkness, guarded by attack, and reinforced by hate. Within its barricades is
still a tiny segment of the Son of God, complete and holy, serene and unaware of
what you think surrounds it. Be you not separate, for the One Who does surround
it has brought union to you, returning your little offering of darkness to the
eternal Light.
86
How is this done? It is extremely simple, being based on what this little
kingdom really is.The barren sands, the darkness and the lifelessness are seen only
through the body’s eyes. Its vision is distorted, and the messages it transmits to
you who made it to limit your awareness are little and limited and so fragmented
they are meaningless. From the world of bodies, made by insanity, insane messages
seem to be returned to the mind which made it. And these messages bear witness
to this world, pronouncing it as true. For you sent forth these messengers to bring
this back to you.
87
Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are no
messages which speak of what lies underneath, for it is not the body that could
speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not; its senses remain quite unaware of it; its
tongue cannot relay its messages.Yet God can bring you there if you are willing
to follow the Holy Spirit through seeming terror, trusting Him not to abandon
you and leave you there. For it is not His purpose to frighten you, but only yours.
You are severely tempted to abandon Him at the outside ring of fear, but He
would lead you safely through and far beyond.
88
The circle of fear lies just below the level the body sees and seems to be
the whole foundation on which the world is based. Here are all the illusions, all
the twisted thoughts, all the insane attacks, the fury, vengeance, and betrayal that
were made to keep the guilt in place, so that the world could rise from it and
keep it hidden. Its shadow rises to the surface, enough to hold its most external
manifestations in darkness and to bring despair and loneliness to it and keep it
joyless.Yet its intensity is veiled by its heavy coverings and kept apart from what
was made to keep it hidden. The body cannot see this, for the body arose from
this for its protection, which must always depend on keeping it not seen. The
body’s eyes will never look on it.Yet they will see what it dictates.
375
xi. The
The body will remain guilt’s messenger and will act as it directs as long as
you believe that guilt is real. For the reality of guilt is the illusion which seems
to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a real foundation for the ego’s
thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent until you see the
light behind it. And then you see it as a fragile veil before the light.
90
This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor which looks like rock, is
like a bank of low dark clouds that seems to be a solid wall before the sun. Its
impenetrable appearance is wholly an illusion. It gives way softly to the mountain
tops which rise above it and has no power at all to hold back anyone willing to
climb above it and see the sun. It is not strong enough to stop a button’s fall nor
hold a feather. Try but to touch it and it disappears; attempt to grasp it and your
hands hold nothing.
91
Yet in this cloud bank, it is easy to see a whole world rising. A solid mountain
range, a lake, a city, all rise in your imagination, and from the clouds the messengers
of your perception return to you, assuring you that it is all there. Figures stand out
and move about, actions seem real, and forms appear and shift from loveliness to
the grotesque. And back and forth they go, as long as you would play the game
of children’s make-believe. Yet however long you play it, and regardless of how
much imagination you bring to it, you do not confuse it with the world below,
nor seek to make it real.
92
So should it be with the dark clouds of guilt, no more impenetrable and no
more substantial. You will not bruise yourself against them in traveling through.
Let your Guide teach you their unsubstantial nature as He leads you past them, for
beneath them is a world of light whereon they cast no shadows. Their shadows
lie upon the world beyond them, still further from the light.Yet from them to the
light their shadows cannot fall.
93
This world of light, this circle of brightness, is the real world where guilt
meets with forgiveness. Here the world outside is seen anew, without the shadow
of guilt upon it. Here are you forgiven, for here you have forgiven everyone. Here
is the new perception, where everything is bright and shining with innocence,
washed in the waters of forgiveness, and cleansed of every evil thought you had
laid upon it. Here there is no attack upon the Son of God, and you are welcome.
Here is your innocence, waiting to clothe you and protect you and make you
ready for the final step in the journey inward. Here are the dark and heavy
garments of guilt laid by and gently replaced by purity and love.
94
Yet even forgiveness is not the end. Forgiveness does make lovely, but it does
not create. It is the source of healing, but it is the messenger of love and not its
89
376
Passing of the Dream
Source. Here you are led that God Himself can take the final step unhindered, for
here does nothing interfere with love, letting it be itself. A step beyond this holy
place, a step still further inward but the one you cannot take, transports you to
something completely different. Here is the Source of light—nothing perceived,
forgiven, nor transformed, but merely known.
xi. The
Passing
of the
Dream
This course will lead to knowledge, but knowledge itself is still beyond the
scope of our curriculum. Nor is there any need for us to try to speak of what
must forever lie beyond words.We need remember only that whoever attains the
real world, beyond which learning cannot go, will go beyond it but in a different
way.Where learning ends there God begins, for learning ends before Him Who is
complete where He begins and where there is no end. It is not for us to dwell on
what cannot be attained. There is too much to learn.The readiness for knowledge
still must be attained.
96
Love is not learned. Its meaning lies in itself. And learning ends when you
have recognized all it is not. That is the interference; that is what needs to be
undone. Love is not learned because there never was a time in which you knew it
not. Learning is useless in the Presence of your Creator,Whose acknowledgment
of you and yours of Him so far transcend all learning that everything you learned
is meaningless, replaced forever by the knowledge of love and its one meaning.
97
Your relationship has been uprooted from the world of shadows, and its
unholy purpose has been safely brought through the barriers of guilt, washed
with forgiveness, and set shining and firmly rooted in the world of light. From
there, it calls to you to follow the course it took, lifted high above the darkness
and gently placed before the gates of Heaven.The holy instant in which you were
united is but the messenger of love, sent from beyond forgiveness to remind you
of all that lies beyond it.Yet it is through forgiveness that it will be remembered.
98
And when the memory of God has come to you in the holy place of
forgiveness, you will remember nothing else, and memory will be as useless as
learning, for your only purpose will be creating.Yet this you cannot know until
every perception has been cleansed and purified and finally removed forever.
Forgiveness removes only the untrue, lifting the shadows from the world and
carrying it safe and sure within its gentleness to the bright world of new and
clean perception. There is your purpose now. And it is there that peace awaits
you.
95
377
ii. Healing and the
nineteen
Beyond the Body
i.
Introduction
W
e said before that when a situation has been dedicated wholly to truth,
peace is inevitable. Its attainment is the criterion by which the wholeness
of the dedication can be safely assumed.Yet we also said that peace without faith
will never be attained, for what is wholly dedicated to truth as its only goal is
brought to truth by faith.This faith encompasses everyone involved, for only thus
the situation is perceived as meaningful and as a whole. And everyone must be
involved in it, or else your faith is limited and your dedication incomplete.
19:2
Every situation properly perceived becomes an opportunity to heal the Son
of God. And he is healed because you offered faith to him, giving him to the Holy
Spirit and releasing him from every demand your ego would make of him. Thus
do you see him free, and in this vision does the Holy Spirit share. And since He
shares it, He has given it, and so He heals through you. It is this joining Him in
a united purpose which makes this purpose real because you make it whole. And
this is healing. The body is healed because you came without it and joined the
Mind in which all healing rests.
ii.
Healing
and the
Mind
The body cannot heal because it cannot make itself sick. It needs no healing.
Its health or sickness depends entirely on how the mind perceives it and the
purpose which the mind would use it for. And it is obvious that a segment of the
mind can see itself as separated from the Universal Purpose. When this occurs,
the body becomes its weapon used against this Purpose to demonstrate the “fact”
that separation has occurred. The body thus becomes the instrument of illusion,
acting accordingly; seeing what is not there, hearing what truth has never said,
and behaving insanely, being imprisoned by insanity.
4
Do not overlook our earlier statement that faithlessness leads straight to
illusions. For faithlessness is the perception of a brother as a body, and the body
3
378
Mind
cannot be used for purposes of union. If, then, you see your brother as a body,
you have established a condition in which uniting with him becomes impossible.
Your faithlessness to him has separated you from him and kept you both apart
from being healed.Your faithlessness has thus opposed the Holy Spirit’s purpose
and brought illusions centered on the body to stand between you. And the body
will seem to be sick, for you have made of it an “enemy” of healing and the
opposite of truth.
5
It cannot be difficult to realize that faith must be the opposite of faithlessness.
Yet the difference in how they operate is less apparent, though it follows directly
from the fundamental difference in what they are. Faithlessness would always
limit and attack; faith would remove all limitations and make whole. Faithlessness
would interpose illusions between the Son of God and his Creator; faith would
remove all obstacles that seem to rise

A Course in Miracles - Miracles in Action Press

Transcription

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